#he was an utter arse to begin with

[batshit-auspol]

I just spent some time scrolling through this blog and am suffering from sever laughter. Thanks so much for collating the countries craziest moments. One of my favourites is when Scott Morrison was in Hawaii while the bushfires where burning.

December 2019: As Australia's east coast is engulfed in the worst bushfires in living memory, rumours begin to circulate that Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison may have secretly fucked off for a holiday in Hawaii.

Keep in mind, this is what is going down in Australia at the time:

The Hawaii rumour is initially written off as a fringe conspiracy, because surely nobody could be that fuckin tonedeaf, and it was quickly forgotten about... until an Australian man visiting Hawaii UPLOADED A SELFIE ON THE BEACH WITH THE PM THROWING A SHAKA.

At which point all hell broke loose.

Overnight the formerly popular "Scomo" became the most despised man in all of Australia. Think "firefighters shouting out of their windows to news cameras" level of despised.

After about two days of radio silence and pretending like he was still at home running the country, the Prime Minister's handlers finally dragged him onto call with an Australian radio station, where he pinky promised to return to Australia as fast as he could in an attempt to calm things down.

Unfortunately Scott's empathy consultant (a real job) then had to watch Scott pour more gasoline on the dumpster fire by uttering the now famous phrase "Look I don't hold a hose mate" when asked by the radio interviewer why the fucking fuck the fuckhead wasn't fucking in Australia doing his fucking job during a massive fucking crisis.

Testing just how much worse things could get, Scomo then proceeded to NOT rush back to Australia as promised, instead attempting to complete the rest of his holiday, a fact that was exposed when a passerby snapped a picture of him still lounging on the beach two days later.

Eventually, holiday complete, Morrison did reluctantly slink back to Australia, and in an attempt to calm things down, he decided to pay a visit to a small town that had been destroyed by the fires.

Which was a big mistake.

Scomo still had not registered how absolutely and totally he had screwed the poodle with his Hawaiian beach vacation, and he walks into what is now taught in PR classes as one of the greatest examples of "what not do do in a crisis" in all of history.

Scotty from Marketing, as he is now dubbed by the nation, spends a painfully cringe-inducing hour wandering around a burned down town with TV news cameras in tow, having to FORCE PEOPLE TO SHAKE HIS HAND in what is some of the most awkward footage you will ever see.

At this point it's probably also worth mentioning that, before becoming Prime Minister, Scott Morrison's biggest claim to fame in politics was being the guy that was so far up the coal lobby's arse that he literally brought coal into parliament and waved it around, claiming it doesn't hurt people.

So when a protest was organised it turned out to be one big national fuck you to the Prime Minister, the likes of which the world has never seen before or since.

Needless to say, at this point Scomo's career was dead in the water, but thanks to the rules brought in to stop Australian political parties from knifing their leader every two weeks (a popular Aussie passtime) Morrison basically couldn't get fired until after the next election.

And so, when the election rolled around in 2022, we decided that was an opportune time to travel over to Hawaii to erect this bad boy tribute to the Prime Minister, on the very beach where Scomo had sat and drank margaritas that one fateful week in December as Australia burned (thanks to @chaser for funding the ticket)

[mysticxpizza]

Convenerunt

(reunited)

warnings: making out, oral (f! receiving), unprotected p-in-v sex (remember condoms irl)

word count: 1055

summary: You and Lucius were childhood friends, but after his apparent death and the ascension of the emperors you get separated. Years later you are given to the gladiator champion, Hanno, and you can’t help feeling he is somehow familiar.

Your life of luxury and relaxation had disappeared overnight, with the new rule of the new Emperors. You had been reduced to simply a body to be traded and sold. Hope and belief that you could soon escape and live a free life kept you surviving from each day to the next; and maybe, just maybe you would see Lucius again.

***

A guard slams your door open, the bars rattling with force, startling you awake. In walks Macrinus, a man your father had once been in business with, littered in jewels and gems.

“Ahhh, look at you. You’ve grown from a small bunch of grapes into a luxuriously fine wine.”, he jests, “A spitting mural of your mother”

You stay silent, not wanting to speak even a word out of turn.

“I have a proposition for you.”, he says, leaning forward. “My prized gladiator deserves, shall we say, a little treat. For his successes in the ring.”

You shift uncomfortably on your cot, your breathing getting quicker, becoming visibly more nervous.

“A treat?”, you whisper.

“I want to give him you, just for a night of pleasure. You can do that for me can’t you?”

***

You had heard of Hanno, a monkey eater, a vicious rage-filled man. The idea of being given to him, filled your body with fear, potentially being ruined and torn by a man capable of murderous intent.

A guard leads you into the pits, walking you to your personal hell.

“HANNO”, he bellows, “A little prize from Macrinus, a small pleasure for tonight. Make the most of her”

The door opens and you’re shoved into the cell. Your receiver stared at the wall, refusing to face you.

“Not much of a gladiator if you can’t even face a woman”, you state, attempting to stay strong and stable.

He begins to turn and all fear fades…

“Lucius.”, you gasp, seeing his face.

You see a glimpse of recognition in his eyes, but he stays silent.

“T-They said you were dead, murdered, but you’re here”, you exclaim, stepping towards him but he backs away.

“I lived that life a long time ago, I’ve changed. I’m not the boy you knew within these walls.”, he mutters, gazing at you sympathetically.

You dare try to approach him again but your heart is pulled to him, your body following suit.

“You’re not the same boy, you’re stronger, a fighter. I-I’m not the same girl either, a lot has changed since you left”, you explain, placing your hand on his scarred face.

He shakes his head, staring deeply at you and bringing his hand to yours.

“You haven’t changed, older and wiser perhaps but you’re still that girl. My girl.” he whispers, your faces moving closer together.

Your lips meet tenderly, with his hands moving to bring you closer to him, your bodies moving in tandem.

“I can’t lose you. I can’t lose anyone else”, he utters.

“You have me.”, you reassure him. “All of me.”

You pull the strings on your dress, letting it fall onto the ground, exposing you to him. You’re them for him to take, completely. He looks at you with a dark lust in his eyes, ready to indulge your mutual desire, all night if he needs to.

His hands move to your hips and arse, grasping you harshly as if you’ll slip through his fingers once more. He quickly spins you around, cradling your head as he pushes you up against the wall. His lips move to your neck, nipping and biting, marking you as his.You gasp and moan, intertwining his hair in your hands, as he moves down to your breasts. He takes your nipple in his mouth, sucking and biting. 

“Oh god, Lucius”, you moan, feeling pleasure take over your body.

His hands move to grasp your thighs, moving you up ever so slightly before beginning to nip at your thighs, holding you up by your arse. He begins to suck on your bundle of nerves, sending waves of warmth and pleasure through your body.

“Ah, ah, Lucius, right there, uh”, you gasp, as he moves his thick fingers into your warm and wet cunt.

The curving of his fingers combined with the small but quick licks against your clit, only fill you with more pleasure and lust.

“Lucius, I-I’m ah,”, you gasp as the pleasure overwhelms you, waves of moaning and gasping overcoming you as you are finally pushed over the edge.

Lucius eagerly laps up your release, feeling his hardness pulse with every sound. He keeps you elevated as he comes back up, kissing you with haste and you moan feeling your taste on his tongue.

Your hands moved to unfasten his tunic, exposing his scarred and injured body as well as his throbbing dick. Your wetness spread to your thighs at the sight of it, more than ready to take it in.

“I need you”, Lucius whispers in your ear,”I can’t lose-"

“You’ll never lose me again, you have me. I’m yours.”, you tell him.

He kisses you once more and slowly pushes inside. Your legs wrap around him, holding him tight as he fully thrusts inside your dripping cunt. You moan in each other's mouths as he cradles you gently against the wall.

Lucius. Lucius. Lucius

It's the only thing running through your mind and coming out of your mouth. He speeds up, hitting all the right spots, determined to give you the most pleasure. He keeps pressing kissing to your collarbone and breasts, making you clench and keep him close to you. He moves his hands to your still sensitive bud, pushing you closer to your second climax.

He breathes heavily into your neck, his thrusts flattering ever so slightly. “I’m gonna-”, he starts

“Me too”, you gasp, as the wave of pleasure soon overtakes the both of you.

You feel him cum inside you and refuse to unfold your legs.

“C-can we just stay like this for a while?”, you ask, still shaking from your climax.

“Of course my love”, he answers, giving you a soft kiss, placing his hand in your hair.

Keeping you in his arms, he unfurls you from the wall, taking the both of you to sit on his small slab of bed, contently reunited and in each other’s arms once more.

[ikinremu]

KINKTOBER DAY 7 | HAIRPULL/SPANKING X TOMMY SHELBY

Tommy Shelby x Fem!Reader

Tags: Hair Pulling, Spanking, Pussy Spanking, Punishment, Degrading

"What'd you think you're playing at, eh?" Tommy scorned, slamming the door firmly behind him as he followed you into his office, "Making me look like a fool infront of everyone, hm?"

It took no time for you to realise your attempt at hiding your amusement was sub-par at best, "Sorry, Tom, I was only-"

"Don't wanna hear it, darlin." He raised a single, tamed brow as he settled himself in his desk chair, "Sorry won't cut it, you know the consequences. Over my lap."

Your heart began pounding against the wall of your chest, and your immediate response was to bargain - not that you even knew where to begin, "Tommy-"

His expression hardened, leaving no room for disagreement, "I said over my lap. Or do I have to make you?"

You folded your arms tightly over your chest, stood a mere few feet's distance from him and his ever-expectant expression.

You couldn't quite bring yourself to submit so easily, so you remained stood boldly before Tommy, which he took clear distaste to.

"Alright." He uttered, suddenly thrusting his hands to the dip of your waist, hauling you over his lap as if it was no inconvenience at all.

Your breath hitched in response, body writhing atop his thighs for a moment. Despite your short-lived protest, you felt heat spread through your skin. "I'm sorry, Tom-"

He cut your words short with nothing but his hands. His touch ventured to the waistband of your skirt, tugging at the costly fabric until it ruffled around your knees, baring your behind to the ferocity of his stare.

"You embarrass me, I'll embarrass you. Only fair, eh sweetheart?" Tommy taunted, marvelling at the sight of you laid across his lap.

His palms swept gently over your skin, testing the thin silk of your underwear against his callous hands. A shiver danced down your spine as his hands explored your flesh.

"Much better like this, hm darlin? Bent over my lap all pretty instead of running that fucking smart mouth of yours." He scolded, punctuating his words with the sudden, rough smack of his hand against your backside.

You gritted your teeth, jolting slightly at the harsh sensation, revelling in the warmth lingering on your skin.

Tommy's vacant hand entangled itself in your hair, practically yanking your head upward, bringing his mouth to loom by your exposed neck, "Manners. Thank me."

You exhaled deeply, determined to not push him further, "Thank you.." You whispered.

His hand came down once more, this time on the opposing side, "Thank you, who?"

You couldn’t help but hiss at the slap, “Thank you, Mr Shelby.” Your skin burnt beneath his palm, stomach fluttering as he kept your head raised firmly.

“There you go. Not completely useless, eh?” Tommy mocked, giving a tender squeeze to the skin he’d just slapped before alternating to the other side once more.

You took offence, and not quietly, twitching at the utter impact of his palm as you retorted, "I am not useless!"

The moment the response escaped you, he cocked a brow, landing another harsh spank to your behind.

“No, no you’re not.” He chimed, “Just perfect for using, aren’t you?” He teased, fingertips dancing along the delicate fabric of your panties, "Bet this little cunts just as pretty as this perfect arse, hm?"

Without the passing of another second, Tommy hauled the underwear down your thighs, allowing them to rest around your buckled knees. Keeping one hand looped tightly through your hair, he spread you with a single hand, presenting himself with a better view.

You gasped slightly as he disposed of your underwear, although you’d be lying to deny the excitement the entire situation was causing you.

After a few greedy moments, he released his grip, planting yet another hard hit, "Such a sweet fuckin' cunt."

Your body jolted once again, feeling your skin grow hotter as it tingled with the lingering heat.

“Fuck!” You cursed in response, and Tommy strengthened his grasp of your hair, pulling your head back the slightest amount.

“Watch that mouth.” He warned, bringing his hand down in a sudden flurry of stern, alternating spanks.

“Sorry.” You whined, features wincing as he clutched your hair, loosening his hold as you apologised.

Abruptly, his hand came down swiftly between your legs, giving a slightly lighter spank to your bare cunt, drawing a strained, shocked sound from your throat.

Tommy chuckled, "You're soaked. You like being bent over my lap and spanked like the dirty whore you are, eh?"

Somehow, your skin grew even hotter, undoubtedly embarrassed at the revelation. Arousal was slick between your upper-thighs, cunt drenched and twitching from the force of his palm.

"Answer me." Tommy grumbled, "You a dirty little whore, hm?"

Your hips bucked as his hand came crashing down on your pussy once again, "Yes, Mr Shelby-"

He let out another rich, deep chuckle as he slid his hands over your now sensitive ass, ghosting over the flesh he’d previously smacked. For several dire moments, you anticipated a following hit, though nothing fell.

"Up." He commanded, and you complied, feeling the sting of your behind as you stood flushed before him, seizing your sodden underwear as it pooled round your knees.

Tommys large hand suddenly encased your wrist before you could complete the task of readjusting them, "I'm not done with you yet. On your knees."

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed! Please note that in the process of kinktober works releasing, I’m also working through requests - if you’ve sent one in then thank you as always for your patience!!

[wheres-mylove]

silent love song | sihtric kjartansson x fem!reader

Summary: A pretty lady is convinced that Sihtric hates her, a pretty warrior is terrified of confessing his feelings more than fighting the most dangerous enemy, and the pretty boys simply have to spring into action, because you can't be more oblivious than these two.

Disclaimer: English isn’t my first language!

Word count: 2.5k

Hope in her heart extinguished as quickly as it had ignited. 

Sihtric Kjartansson ran away from her once again. 

The cool air was a welcome change after hours spent in a stuffy and stinky hall, overflowing with joyful men. Though drunken would be a more fitting description. The wind tousled (Y/N)'s hair as she quietly left the room to take a break from the chaos that only a band of celebrating warriors could create. She turned her head at the sound of approaching footsteps. In the dimly lit vestibule, she recognized Sihtric's figure. He stood there for a few seconds. Then, he spun on his heel and returned to his companions. 

(Y/N) let out a heavy sigh. Since she had never noticed the boy's flushed cheeks and how nervously he gulped, trying to find the courage to talk to her, she once again came to the following conclusion - Sihtric Kjartansson did not like her. From the very beginning. 

Poor girl rested her head against the wooden railing and closed her eyes in frustration. She didn’t even know what his problem was!

“What a cheerful mood,” commented Finan, nudging her with his elbow. “Is the lady planning to stand here in this abyss of despair or will she come back to us?” 

“Why don’t you go away and bother someone else?”

“My other friends have ugly faces. It takes away my drinking joy.” 

(Y/N) laughed and shook her head. 

“Are ya okay? Ale’s too strong?” he asked, then smiled playfully. “Sihtric is worried.”

The girl glanced at him and furrowed her brow in contemplation. She hoped Finan would keep it discreet after she said what she had intended to say. 

“I'm asking you, because you're an honest man,” she began, smoothing the material of her skirts just to occupy her hands. She had to know. “Sometimes even recklessly straightforward.”

“Thank ya,” he replied with a proud smile. Then he processed the second part of her statement and grimaced. “I guess.” 

“Why does Sihtric hate me?” she asked, her tone almost pleading. “I don't mean that he has to like me, but he doesn't utter a word to me, while he talks to everyone else. He runs away at the sight of me! Even today. Is my company that unbearable, or did I do something to offend him? If it's the latter, I will apologize, for heaven's sake!” 

Finan stood there with raised eyebrows for a while. Then he let out a belly laugh. (Y/N) waited with hands placed on her hips until the Irishman stopped wheezing. 

“That's what you get when you ask a drunkard anything,” she retorted, about to walk away, but Finan held her arm.

“No, wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!” he exclaimed, wiping tears from his eyes. “You've amused me so. Wait! Wait, woman.”

“You're making fun of my problems. If you told me that girls run away at the sight of you, I would at least explain why. Sometimes you're a real piece of shit.”

“Girls go crazy when they see me,” he protested, to which (Y/N) rolled her eyes. “But ya make Danish warriors weak in the knees, so you have nothing to complain about! Sihtric worships the ground ya walk on, I'm serious now.” Finan straightened up and smiled, but this time more gently. “He's cute, but he's already wearing us all out with his tales about your beauty, so if you could just help us out…” 

“You're making fun of me,” (Y/N) replied uncertainly, searching his face for signs of deception. 

“For someone so wise, you're more blind than my grandmother in her final days,” Finan muttered, crossing his arms. “Think for a moment. He doesn't have to say anything. It's just that ya seem to have your eyes up your arse.”

“I should drown you in that barrel of ale. I'm going to sleep, and I suggest you do the same.” The girl jumped off the steps without looking back. 

“He bows when he sees ya approaching, even if miles separate ya,” the Irishman continued. (Y/N) reluctantly stopped, though her stubbornness still prevented her from turning around. “He stands near your tent at night, and believe me, no one dares to enter. Who do ya think takes care of your horse? The servants, to put it mildly, have been dismissed.” (Y/N) slowly faced Finan. “When trouble or danger arises, who magically appears in front of ya? Coincidence, right? And when we set up camp a week ago, I hope ya know that no one conjured those extra furs; they were from him.”

The girl looked down and sighed softly. 

“And the flowers by the entrance of my tent, I presume?”

“Aye, ya should see how enthusiastically he picks them! That beast has gone a bit mad for ya. Anything else, my lady?”

“When I said I have no means to defend myself…”

“A sudden surge of wisdom!”

“Be quiet,” she murmured with a smile, waving him goodbye.

“That's a nice dagger ya have!”

Because it’s Sihtric's.

A complete, humiliating, crippling defeat.

“Did you shit your breeches?” Uhtred yelled loud and clear, even before Sihtric could return defeated to their table.

“Come on, give him a break, lord.” Osferth threw Sihtric a comforting look and a tight-lipped smile. Sihtric messed up his hair and slumped heavily on the bench.

“I can't handle it, I just can't,” he admitted with considerable embarrassment. “If only she were a little less beautiful, everything would look different.”

“Close your eyes then,” Beocca advised from above his bowl of stew.

“God's wisdom knows no bounds,” Osferth commented in a voice devoid of emotion and glanced at Sihtric, who, in his misery, decided to down his ale in one go. 

“I don't understand you, I simply don't understand you,” Uhtred sighed. “A brave warrior, slaying enemies with a sword, an axe, even with bare hands. And he's afraid to simply talk to a lady.” 

“Uhtred, feelings have overwhelmed people more than once. The heart is not inclined to listen to rational explanations. It follows its own rules,” Beocca spoke up, folding his hands on the table. “Don't lose faith, Sihtric. Everything will work out.”

“He doesn't need faith, just some balls,” Uhtred protested, to which the priest and the baby monk gave him disapproving looks. 

“What? Nothing but the truth.”

“She wouldn't want me anyway,” the young warrior spoke, staring into the bottom of his mug. “She is a lady, and what am I? What can I offer her? What can I give her? It's pathetic. It's enough for me to admire her from a distance and know that she's safe; the rest is just a stupid dream.”

“He's entered the wailing phase,” Uhtred groaned. Leaning back, he looked towards the entrance. “Finan went to her. He probably annoyed her. Oh, he definitely annoyed her. Maybe she was already irritated that you messed up once again and exploded.”

“Whatever do you mean?” 

“Gods, Sihtric, she was looking at you all evening. She went outside alone, so you had a perfect excuse to approach her, you fool.”

“It's not that simple-”

“My lady, what a beautiful evening it is today. You suddenly disappeared, and I wanted to make sure everything is okay. It is? Great. I wanted to be certain. And ask if you would like to sleep in my tent tonight.”

“Uhtred!”

“What now?”

“The savage speaks through you,” Beocca scolded him. Meanwhile, Finan returned and leaned conspiratorially over his dark-haired friend. 

“(Y/N) asked about ya, little runt.” 

“About me?” Sihtric raised his head so quickly that he almost broke his friend's nose. “What exactly did she say?” 

“Ya would know if ya had gone there and asked her yourself,” Finan replied with a wicked smile and darted back towards the exit. 

“Finan!” Sihtric shouted after him, immediately getting up from his seat. “What did she say? Finan!”

“If things continue to look like this, the opportunity will slip right past him,” Uhtred concluded, watching with amusement as Sihtric chased after the Irishman. “We need to corner him.”

“But how, my lord?” Osferth asked uncertainly. “He gets very nervous in her presence. I doubt we can…”

 “Anger is a bit stronger than fear. And I have an idea.”

 “Oh God, watch over us.”

Something was off. Aethelwold had never sat so close. And Sihtric's eyes had never gleamed with such fury. 

“That's exactly how it happened, my lady. I'm not telling this story to boast, oh no,” the royal nephew spoke, gesturing animatedly.

(Y/N) had hoped for a peaceful afternoon and a bit of quiet in the shade of the sprawling oak tree. She had some things to think about. She had to think about Sihtric. About Finan's words. And about things she hadn't noticed before. Perhaps she had indeed surpassed the Irishman's grandmother in her blindness. 

Barely had she settled under the tree with an apple in her hand and a tangle of thoughts in her head when Sihtric appeared nearby. He must have had a lot to do in that area.

She lifted her gaze when she felt him looking at her. He blushed to the tips of his ears and bowed deeply. She smiled and was about to get up and approach him. (Y/N) had prepared a perfect excuse. The dagger desperately needed sharpening. Maybe Sihtric would confess that he had given it to her. But all dreams and plans were ruined by Aethelwold, emerging out of nowhere with an innocent smile. 

“My lady,” he began and sat down next to her without waiting for an invitation. “If it's not a bother, I'll keep you company for a while. I see it's not. We haven't had a chance to get to know each other better, don't you think?” 

(Y/N) wasn't quite sure what this arrogant man was getting at, but she decided to listen to his utterly fascinating stories for a while so as not to appear rude. 

Sihtric was seething. He thought Osferth was lying because Uhtred ordered him to. The young monk had told him in great secrecy that he overheard a conversation between Aethelwold and (Y/N)'s brother. The topic of discussion was an initial marriage agreement. Of course, Sihtric didn’t believe him. 

But now, before Sihtric's eyes, that pile of dung was cozying up to his lady. He was probably telling outrageous things just to brag. 

Sihtric Kjartansson sharpened his sword, carefully observing every move of Aethelwold. That poor fool felt beads of sweat on his forehead when their eyes met. 

“Lord, if you'll allow me, I'm very tired,” (Y/N) gently interrupted his never-ending story and got up, dusting off her dress. Aethelwold stood up with her and grabbed her wrist firmly, holding her in place. 

Big mistake. 

One pleading look from (Y/N) later, the man, royal or not, landed on his backside with a loud thud, forcefully pushed away. 

“The lady leaves when she wishes to leave, and you keep your hands to yourself,” the young Dane growled, to which Aethelwold raised his hands in a defensive gesture. 

“Yes, I apologize,” he quickly stammered, gathering himself from the ground and rushing off to an appointed place. 

“Never again, he looked at me like he were the devil himself,” Aethelwold said in a high-pitched voice. He extended his hand, on which Uhtred sprinkled a few silver coins. “I demand a barrel of ale added to my payment. He was sharpening his sword!”

“We saw. Someone got maaad,” chuckled Finan, trying to get a better look from behind the twigs.

“Important thing is, it worked. That justifies my lie, doesn't it, lord?” Osferth asked for a confirmation, pushing past Finan.

“God will forgive you,” Uhtred promised. “But you won't get the ale, Aethelwold. There was supposed to be a kiss too.”

“Of course! So he could kill me!”

Unaware of the trap set for him, Sihtric was seething with jealousy and a sense of injustice. She couldn't marry that scoundrel. 

“Thank you, I thought I'd never get rid of him,” (Y/N) smiled and bowed her head slightly. 

“Can I say something?” Sihtric asked with desperate fervor.

“You certainly should, it's rare,” the girl laughed, but her expression grew serious at the sight of his face. 

“Don't marry him. Don't do this to me and to yourself.”

“Sihtric? I'm not…”

“Aethelwold doesn't deserve you. Honestly, I doubt anyone ever will. He's a coward and you, (Y/N), need something more. Someone who will pledge you a sword along with their heart. And give you that whole heart until it becomes one with yours. Make you a part of their world in its very core. They'll dream of you because you're someone worth dreaming of. Worth of devotion and tenderness. They'll see in you not only the beauty that weakens me, but also the strength and courage that are evident in every move you make-”

(Y/N) looked at him for a while, her gaze wandering over his face. 

“Weaken you?”

“What?” Sihtric stumbled, suddenly realizing the weight of his slip of the tongue.

“Why were you silent for so long if you speak like this?” (Y/N) sighed before rising on her tiptoes and planting a sweet kiss on his lips. Sihtric didn't open his eyes, afraid it was all a dream. 

“My lady? I... I apologize if it's too much at once…”

“Someone recently talked some sense into me, so now I know you've been telling me this all along, little by little,” (Y/N) confessed, cupping his face in her hands. “You spoke through your actions, Sihtric. I'm sorry for averting my gaze.”

The mighty warrior fixed his gaze on the tree, embarrassed to meet the girl's eyes.

“Did you at least like the flowers?”

“Very much. Where do you pick them?”

“It's a secret.”

“We can go pick them together sometime. And roll in the grass.” 

Sihtric burst into laughter and kissed her more passionately. The realization hit him that now he could. 

“Wait,” (Y/N) suddenly said, holding him back by the arm. “Where did the idea that I'm getting married come from?”

“Osferth told me,” he said, furrowing his brow. “And the person that told you-”

“Finan,” (Y/N) quickly interrupted. 

“One could have guessed.”

“No. Well, yes. But now I mean that Finan is standing over there and waving at us.” 

Sihtric turned around abruptly. Now not only Finan, but also the rest of the party left their hiding spot. The boys looked very pleased with themselves. 

“Right, Uhtred all along,” (Y/N) looked at Sihtric. “You frightened the poor man and he was just doing your lord's bidding.”

“He deserved it,” he whispered in her ear. They heard a cough behind them. Father Beocca also decided to grace them with his presence. 

“Is anyone else hiding in the bushes?” Sihtric muttered, rolling his eyes. 

“I only came to inquire about when we're setting the date for the wedding.”

“Whose wedding? It's easy to get confused,” (Y/N) chuckled. 

“Yours, lady. With Sihtric, of course,” Beocca replied nonchalantly, pointing with his finger at the Dane still embracing her tightly. “Uhtred told me.”

[ewanmitchellcrumbs]

Goddamn your note about Michael getting pegged makes me think you should elaborate on it because I’m down bad for that nerd and would love it if he cried while getting pegged

Is this anything?

Warnings: Pegging (obviously), smut Word count: I do not know. This is a drabble, I guess? Written within the confines of this Tumblr ask. No beta. We die like men.

The elasticated straps that fit snugly around the swell of her hips and arse make her feel powerful, the satisfying weight of the rubber phallus held firm by them against her crotch furthering the sensation.

But it is the sight of her boyfriend, Michael, laying before her, utterly at her mercy upon the bed that really feeds her ego. Stripped naked, skin flushed and perspiring lightly, as his breaths come in shallow pants, he looks utterly helpless. She doesn't need to look at the way his cock strains and leaks against his lower abdomen to see how eager he is. There is a desperate look of need in his baby blue eyes, framed by the square rims of his glasses, that tells her all she needs to know.

He gives an impatient whimper, his voice barely audible as a whispered "please" escapes him. She giggles, satisfaction washing over her in a warm wave as she watches him plead and writhe against the mattress.

When she had first met Michael at the start of first year, she would never have guessed she would have him in such a compromising situation almost nine months later. The bespectacled, self proclaimed maths genius had been cocky and arrogant, despite not falling in with the popular crowd at Oxford, and he was incredibly uptight alongside it.

In theory, she should have hated him, however, she found herself drawn to his sense of self assurance and unwillingness to conform to the social etiquette required to be accepted by the other students. Their friendship had blossomed into more when she had consoled him after he'd been ditched by Oliver Quick at the pub. She can't remember who had leaned in first, but from the moment their lips met, they were inseparable.

The end of the final term of first year is looming, and with it come exams. Michael has been tenser than usual, irritable and quick to anger. His refusal to accept anything less than utter perfection for his results weighs heavily upon his shoulders. She knows he's guaranteed a first, he's too clever for anything less, and she is sure that deep down he knows it too. However, the intense pressure he places upon himself to revise, despite being able to do it all in his head already, is placing a strain upon both of them.

It had started as a means to help him relieve stress - their usually active sex life had dwindled to nothing as Michael buried himself in text books, and she was so pent up from her own revision that the touch starvation was beginning to get to her. She had wanted to make him feel good, to ease the pressure he was placing upon himself.

The moment she had crawled down the bed and tasted him upon her tongue, all inhibition had left her. Her movements had grown sloppy and uncontrolled as she'd bobbed her head back and forth over the length of him. His soft groans of pleasure had encouraged her and she'd pulled off of him to offer the same attention to his stones. As her tongue had flicked out towards the velvety skin, her enthusiasm causing her movements to be imprecise, she had pressed her tongue lower than intended, the tip of it grazing the tight ring of muscle hidden between his buttocks.

To her surprise, instead of bucking away and demanding she stop, he had gasped, his breathless request of "do that again" making her smirk, but all too happy to oblige. She had pressed a finger into him, its passage aided by the wetness of her saliva and watched in fascination as, after a few well aimed pumps, a string of expletives had left her boyfriend's mouth as he coated his stomach in pearly white spend.

He had seemed more relaxed after that, not quite so intense in the way he carried the burden of his exams. With this in mind, and having unlocked a new side to Michael, she was eager to explore it, and after copious amounts of online research, which she was sure had forever ruined her search history, she had made a discreet visit to Ann Summers the following day. Her skin grew hot with embarrassment as she'd placed the strap on kit and lubricant upon the counter to pay for it, but the excitement of what was to come made her brief humiliation worth it.

Most nights since then have ended with him stretched around her fingers as he spills down her throat, his fingers clutching the bedsheets so tightly that hie knuckles turn white. Concerned she would scare him off, she had yet to bring up the topic of pegging - until this evening.

As she had laid between his thighs, her fingers circling his puckered hole, she had looked up at him, taking in the flush of his cheeks and his parted lips.

"How do you feel about pegging?" She'd whispered, her eyes flitting to his.

He'd swallowed thickly, attempting to get his thoughts in order. "What's that?"

Deciding it was better to show him, she had reached into her bedside table, retrieving the Ann Summers bag and taken out the kit to show him.

As his eyes had widened, she was sure he'd tell her no, accuse her of being a weirdo, insist he'd never do such a perverted thing, but he had shocked her when he'd simply asked: "will it hurt?"

She had reassured him it wouldn't, told him that she'd prepare him with her fingers first, use the same lubricant they always do to help loosen him up. It would feel as it normally, just fuller, more intense.

That is how he has come to lay before her now, spread out and trembling with anticipation.

She smirks down at him, leaning over to pluck his glasses from him his face, depositing them onto the bedside table. "Don't want these steaming up."

"But I won't be able to see..."

"Oh, Michael," she coos, "just focus on the sensations."

Taking one of the pillows from the head of the bed, she taps the side of his hip, with a gentle command of "up", before sliding it beneath his pelvis, elevating him to where she needs him to be.

Having already prepared him with her fingers, she spreads a generous amount of lube along the shaft of her strap, and around his opening. Michael's breathing is erratic as he watches her, his grasp of the bedsheets impossibly tight.

"You ready?" She asks, gazing down at him, stroking his thigh.

He nods fervently, his voice shaky. "Y--yeah...I think so..."

"Good boy."

She presses forward, met by slight resistance as Michael inhales sharply.

"Just relax for me, breathe," she instructs gently.

Her passage eases slightly as he relaxes and she stills as she bottoms out, reaching up to cup his jaw tenderly.

"How's that feel?"

"Full," he utters, voice strained, "but not unpleasant."

"Good. I'm going to move now, is that okay?"

He nods again, and she withdraws slowly, before pressing back in. Her heart feels as though it skips a beat as she watches his cock twitch against his stomach, accompanied by his soft groan of pleaure.

Slowly but surely, she increases the pace and intensity of her thrusts, until the slap of her skin can be heard against his. He writhes beneath her as she grips his thighs to hold him in place, no intelligible words leaving his mouth besides needy whines and whimpers.

Taking pity on him, she takes his length in hand - now so hard it looks as though it's actually causing him pain - and pumps it in a steady rhythm with the movement of her hips.

His toes curl, his breaths ragged and face reddened. "I--I'm gonna..."

Unable to finish his sentence, he screws his eyes shut, brow furrowing as he cries out an elongated "fuck", spilling himself over her knuckles in forceful spurts. He trembles with aftershocks, pulsating and twitching against her palm, clenching around her strap, until finally he stills.

As he relaxes back against the mattress, she can see his lash line has turned watery, tears of relief filling his eyes as he gasps for breath.

"You enjoyed that then?" She asks playfully.

All he's able to muster is a tired nod and an "mmm".

"Your last exam's tomorrow, isn't it?"

His eyes swim back into focus as he stares up at her, reaching for his glasses to put them back on. "Yeah...but we can carry on doing this afterwards...can't we..?"

She grins down at him. "Yeah, we can carry on doing this."

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[yeyinde]

SEA FEVER | Sailor!John Price x Reader

When he invited you to see his ship, half of it was—admittedly—a euphemism. A thinly veiled come-on. A facsimile of romance. Who wouldn't, after all, want to drift out to the open ocean, making love—or some sad version of it—under the stars on a clear night? And he thinks that might be fine. Maybe it's all you want from him, anyway—just a night. A moment. A memory to keep.  But John's always been greedy. The kind that wants, and wants. Once would never be enough, and he knows that if he sunk his teeth into you, a bite would never satiate his rapacious appetite, never quench the hunger.  And since he can't make a meal out of a morsel, he'd rather starve. 

tags: fluff, angst, unapologetic pining, obsession at first sight (but then love follows), blink and you'll miss it awful coping mechanisms (self-isolation, self-exile) and brief allusions to trauma (unresolved because this is about fucking the physical manifestation of the ocean, lads; it ain't about healing), egregious sea themes, a Newfie and his Newfie-isms, whirlwind romance; questionable sailing choices warnings: 18+ | allusions to smut but everything is brief and vague and more about the Feelings™ than the act, explicit male solo though but also very brief and about the Pining™. word count: 25k notes: unconventional leading man (haggard sea boy) romances local travesty (ambiguous, wishy-washy bartender) in a love affair no one asked for. That's what this is. Enjoy. 

*Suggestive themes are signified by a sailor's knot above the paragraph for those who want to read this, but don't care much for smut. SFW will begin with an anchor and wave divider above it. NSFW & SFW shown below:

—PRICE

The storm off the coast of Newfoundland is stronger than he'd anticipated. 

What starts as a bleak looking cloud on the horizon quickly churns the waters into a rough, sickly looking grey that rocks against his vessel without any respite. The cabin is in utter disarray within seconds of being battered by waves that seem to grow in size with each harrowing shade of charcoal blue the sky turns. 

A few warnings from local trawlers in the area, ones quickly turning into the nearby harbour, and a firm reprimand by the Canadian Coast Guard when he radioed back and asked if anchoring was a feasible option (oh, sure, b'y, the man said, his thick Maritime twang hiding none of his derisive scorn. If ye wan'na meet y'r mak'r, it's a safe place to capsize, luh. We'll risk our arses in the morn' when y'need savin', we do. If there's anythin' left of ya that needs savin', anyhoo), he's quick to follow their example. 

But, unfortunately, not quick enough. 

The sudden squall tears through his hull with a vengeance, ripping the sails from their perch with a gust of wind that seems determined to play chicken with the efficiency of his ballast tanks (a pyrrhic victory for Captain and her unquenchable bloodlust for trying herself on just how far she can list before rocketing back upright). He knows with full certainty, and innate experience traversing through the Gulf Stream when he was younger and much more foolish, that the damage is nearly catastrophic. Nearly, of course, because while it clipped his sails, he has engines to bring him back, limping, to the coast the Guard directs him to. 

"See there, y'er ten clicks away, b'y. Sending coordinates in a minute, now."

He's reminded of the warnings given by gnarled, old sailors who told him about the dangers of solo-sailing as he tries to be everything all at once to get his ship to the harbour they directed him to. Asking him, how can you be the captain, the navigator, and the watch all at the same time? When do you sleep? The answer, of course, is barely, but Price likes the freedom of being on his own. The isolation at sea isn't for everyone, but he takes to it with an ease that seems to defy all the gods of the ocean until he stands triumphant in his own domain, on his own ship. 

Until now, that is. 

Until he's battling with a handicap in the ocean. 

But somehow—luck, maybe—he limps his way to the port where he finds fishermen helping latch the vessels to the marina in the harbour. 

Shaded in a dreary grey, the port looks grimy and desolate from his cabin's porthole. A few wooden shacks on the beach are painted in faded primary colours and bear the quintessential marks of a seaside town—seashells, sailors knots (Carrick bend and Ashley stoppers), seahorses, and anchors. Without the dour grey of the downpour, he thinks it might be charming in a way. Quaint. There's a market to the west of him where stacks of lobster cages sit. Men in wellies and rubber dungarees shout orders amid the chaos of the storm, and he takes a moment to gather his things in a rucksack before he joins them on the deck. 

This late at night, there isn't much anyone can do but hunker down and hope for the best. The men point him in the direction of the closest inn—the only one, another jokes—and he tries not to think about how badly damaged Captain will be in the morning. His own stupidity, of course; he knew there was a storm coming but he underestimated how vicious it would be. 

With a nod of thanks, he sets off. 

Brushing against the Eastern coast of Canada was meant to just be a simple drive-by back to Liverpool. Barely a stop, really. Just a scenic route so he could spend his thirty-ninth birthday over the sunken wreck of the Titanic before continuing on the nearly week-long journey across the Atlantic. 

But instead, he celebrates it with a bottle of rum, and a ship on the verge of sinking—stuck, now, in Nova Scotia until he can find a mechanic to patch her up before he sets sail again. 

He sends a quick text to Soap about the delay—stuck in Canada, fuckin' hurricanes—and tries not to dwell on the sudden ease in his guts at the prospect of not going home anytime soon. 

(There are worse places he could be for his birthday, he thinks. Like Liverpool.)

The port he anchored his vessel to is a bottleneck between the last stretch of land for some hundreds of kilometres and the vast, ungiving ocean.

It isn't much to look at—just an empty boardwalk shaped like a horseshoe with most of the shops closed down for the season (or permanently, if the ramshackle state of them is anything to by), save for a grocer, an inn that takes up most of the middle section of the pier, a fisherman's village on the inlet with locals buying the wares from the lush waters filled to the brim with lobster and Atlantic salmon, a seafood restaurant, a cafe that moonlights as a pizza parlour in the evenings, and a pub—but it's enough for now. It's quaint, he thinks, even in its seasonal destitution. 

The buildings are all painted in faded primary colours that are washed out in the heavy rain that falls from some coastal hurricane just touching down in Labrador. 

It's one of those small seaside harbours that have seen better days. One with an economy wholly dependent on passing sailors just to survive, and he feels the despondency in the air like a thick, humid fog clinging to the skin of his neck. Fading signs. Peeling paint. There's damage to some of the buildings from a hurricane that must have swept through some several seasons ago, but the funds to repair are almost nonexistent, and so it sits. Festers. A broken reminder of how deadly the sea can be, even on land. 

The herringbone pier creaks under his weight as he walks the sandy trek from the marina beside the village to the inn (no vacancy, it reads, with middle letters flickering ominously), and he grapples with the unease that fills him at being on solid land for the first time in months. A strange, unshaky gait, as if the cartilage in his aching knees turned to liquid while he was at sea. 

It doesn't bother him too much—by the time he recalibrates to the weight of land pressing down on his soles, it'll be time to leave. 

Maybe. 

("It'll pass," the innkeeper sniffs when he asks about how long these things usually last. "Give 'er a week or so, and she'll blow right by. Might cause some floodin' in Halifax, but we're on the opposite end of 'er. Should be fine.")

It smells like rotten fish, blooming algae, and old frying oil—a typical thoroughfare for most of the harbours he's saddled up to in the years he's been traversing the open ocean. He breathes it in and finds himself already missing the potent loam that brims from the seawater at night. Salt, humus, brine, eelgrass; the ocean smells distinct in its rot. This, then, is a pale ersatz. 

He's been here for a short, few hours already, and still can't seem to adjust to life on land. To the smells, the sounds, the people—not that there's too many of them around here. Price would be surprised if this town's population was higher than three hundred. 

But it's stifling all the same. 

And cold. 

Being at the very tip of the Atlantic ocean, the weather is a near constant gloom. Grey, lacklustre skies smeared with thick, black clouds looming in the horizon like an omen. Salt-saturated air. It's a strange amalgamation between a chilling breeze from the sea and a dense wall of humidity even this late in September. It's uncomfortably thick under the veiled sun—a pale yellow hidden behind streaks of grey cloud cover. 

The best description for this little place is dreary. 

One he thinks might still be true even without the hurricane looming in the distance; a constant, inescapable chokehold within reach. 

In the interior of the small fishing village, people chatter aimlessly about everything except the hurricane (but he supposes that with the frequency of them happening, there isn't much else to say about them except, ah, fuck, again?). He finds a modicum of comfort in their strange twang—a mangled bastardisation of Irish, Scottish, and something unique to the barren, eastern coast of Canada. It almost feels like home, strangely. Like someone dropped him in the Canadian version of Cork, Ireland. 

The people he meets in passing as he drifts aimlessly between the shops, picking up something for dinner and a set of clean clothes, are friendly in an almost aggressive way. 

Then, of course, there's you. 

You weren't expected. A catastrophe in the making, one that he can see coming from a mile away. It's something he has a keen intuition for—being able to sense the kind of trouble that will make leaving harder than it has to be—and he knows better than to entertain this little fantasy, but there's something about you that makes him keep coming back. 

Maybe it's the booze you ply him with; top of the shelf despite adding it to his tab under a bottom barrel price tag. Or the fact that no one has been able to replicate the perfect whisky sour he had down in Barbados, but—goddamn—you come very close. 

Or maybe it's just exactly what it is:

Loneliness. Distraction. 

He's a man always on the move. One who hasn't kissed land in months. And you're—

Well. 

You're the prettiest thing he'd seen since a rainbow cast a glimmering ring on the horizon eighteen kilometres off the coast of the Philippines. 

He isn't old. Not in the way that matters, but the sea has a way of chipping people apart; ageing them in ways that land just can't replicate. He's not yet forty, but sometimes he wakes up after barely missing a brutal storm in the middle of the ocean, and he feels like he's almost sixty. Battered body, bruised and broken; sunscorched. Salt-weathered. 

You, though, make him feel his actual age. As if he's some young, dumb lad who ought to know better but doesn't care. Flippant in the way only the people in Liverpool can be. Young of heart. Dumb of mind. 

And fuck—

Thinking about that place, those goddamn idiots in the pub who didn't know what quiet meant, makes him realise just how much he misses it. Not home. Never home. Home is the sea. The ocean. Home is this little place between land. A wild, untamed beast. The place where, when he was eighteen and smitten, he threw his heart down to the bottom of that unending chasm of midnight blue. 

But you make him homesick, and he thinks he ought to resent you a little bit for it.

(He doesn't, of course; doesn't think he could ever hate you for making him feel even though he should because you make leaving harder than it's ever been, and he doesn't know what to do about that.)

It starts over a glass of whisky. 

He's no stranger to being the foreigner, the tourist. Price is a tall man with broad shoulders and a permanent smear of sunburn across the bridge of his nose, no matter the season. With his unkempt beard of wry umber curls, his deep timbre that sounds more like the battered engine of a classic, American muscle car, a sea-weathered gaze, and his penchant for a stiff drink and an unfiltered cigar, he has a tendency to stand out. 

(Or so he's been told.)

So, when you round the corner of the bar, brow ticking up in intrigue as he wanders in, sun-beaten and salt-slicked, he isn't surprised to hear you murmur:

"Not from around here, are you?"

Still. It makes him huff. "How'd you guess?"

Your other brow joins the first. "This town has a permanent population of maybe sixty people. I like to think I know every single one of them. You, however, I don't know."

"That so?"

You nod. "Yes, sir—"

And fuck. The way you speak, softly but with a rawness in your tone that's completely void of any false pleasantry, seems to notch somewhere in his ribcage, however dusted it is with barren white cobwebs.

"No. No sirs here," he finds himself saying, unprompted, and a little adrift from his usual character. He likes the importance that comes with being known as an authority figure; respected—the responsibility gives him something to do, and John has never really known how to be anything other than a leader, even when he shouldn't be. 

(Especially when he shouldn't be.)

"Then what should I call you, stranger?"

He shrugs one shoulder in a lofty reply, but doesn't give you his name. Not right away, anyway—he also thinks he likes the mystery of being a stranger in a strange land—but you don't press. Your hands lift, palms facing him, in a mockery of surrender. 

"Okay, stranger. What can I get for you?"

"Whisky," he says, a touch gruffer than he should be considering how nice you're being, but he's also never been the sort to care much about social niceties. "Neat. Bottle of spring water on the side."

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees you mouth the words back to yourself, a little smile clipping the corner of your lips. Bottle of water. It makes him huff again. 

"Good business to mock your guests, is it?" 

It's your turn to shrug. "Only when they don't give me their name."

You're quick in a way he doesn't expect. Snappy. Unpolished. But considering the way you walk around the bar, snatching up a bottle, and then a glass without even sparing a glance to see what's in your hands, it tells him you're familiar with this place. I know everyone, it screams. 

It's an inference—but he's always been rather good at those as well—that you've been here a while. Maybe this place is home to you. Maybe it has always been. 

Growing up in a dilapidated port town must have rubbed off on you in all the wrong ways. Waspish but still deferential to your elders. Quick with your words. Taking everything to the chin without a flinch. 

You grew up around sailors. Around men who can't seem to stand still on land long enough to call any place home. And he almost pities you for it. Almost. 

But he doesn't know you well enough to care. 

So, he doesn't. 

Motions, instead, to the cigar case he lays flat on the table after fishing it out of his front pocket with a small murmur to see if it's alright if he smokes inside. Places like these are so far behind on bylaws, he doubts anyone would blink if he smoked indoors, but it's better to be safe, he reasons, than to find himself on the curb nursing bloodied knuckles and a black eye. 

(One too many nights down in Manila taught him well enough.)

You nod, then look around the empty pub. "Go ahead. I don't think anyone here will mind."

It makes bark out something that sounds too shorn around the edges, too frayed and unevenly cut, to be a laugh, but it still makes your lips quiver, pulling up in a smile. 

"Glad you've got my back." 

He leaves it open. An empty space for you to fill in, give him your name. A proper introduction. 

Price isn't too surprised when you don't, and instead use two, well-practised fingers to slide his drink over to him, not spilling a drop. There's a flash of teeth. A mockery of a smile. 

And then: "drink up. First one is on the house."

"Well, aren't you charming."

"It's just good business," you quip with a little more teeth. "Gotta stay above the competition."

It pulls another bark from his chest. The second in less than ten minutes. He can't remember the last time he laughed this much, however lumpish and unrefined it might be. 

"It's working," he adds, tipping the glass in your direction. "Might come back for a round yet." 

"Just don't be a stranger." 

He should have been. 

Living a large majority of his life floating aimlessly in the vast expanse of the open sea has given him several insights into who he is as a person, as a man, and what makes him tick. The situations he was forced into, almost all of them being life or death, make him acutely aware of himself in a way that only those who have trust pushed past the limits of their mettle know. 

Price is good at spotting danger. Looming storms. Rogue waves. Reefs jutting out in the middle of the ocean.

And everything about you is dangerous.

He knows himself well enough to know that you're his kryptonite. His weakness. That those glossy eyes, your stubborn pride, your spitfire mouth, are all things pitted against him. All designed to make him suffer as much as possible. 

You're more dangerous than running out of fuel near Australia. Almost getting capsized off the coast of Sri Lanka. Surviving a sudden hurricane in the waters around Mexico. 

You—

You make him yearn. You make him want. 

You make him think about things he swore off of when he was eighteen and set sail around the world all on his own. 

For the first time since he left Liverpool in a boat he named Captain, Price thinks about home. Solid land beneath his feet. 

Dangerous, indeed. 

And despite everything warning him away, he goes back. 

Blames it on a litany of things—all half-truths that are only marginally easy to swallow. Things like: it's been ages since he had a stiff drink, and this is the only pub in some ten kilometres, or so. The only licence he cared enough to renew is his boating permit, and he isn't even sure if his driver's licence from Hereford is valid anymore. Never bothered much to check. 

He needs to get out, anyway. Has to find someone to fix the leak he'd sprung crossing the Labrador Strait. Needs to get more fuel. Enough to last him until he can get to Maine. 

And where else is he going to find anyone in this town to do all of that if not at the pub?

It's practical. A necessity. 

(And if he wears his nicest shirt that only barely smells sunbleached, then no one has to know.)

No one. Except you, that is. 

You wave to him in what's quickly becoming known as your usual greeting. A slight widening of your eyes, as if you're surprised to see him. Then a small quirk of your lips that always accompanies the briefest flash of teeth. If you're not busy making a drink, you lift your hand up, fingers loosely curled over your palm. A lazy wave. 

He echoes it all back with a sharp nod as he takes his seat at the bar. His usual, too, because despite having not been a marine since he was twenty-six, he still has the training he picked up ingrained in his marrow. Back to the corner. Exits in his periphery. 

(Old habits die hard, he thinks, and feels his heart leap to the base of his throat when you grin at him from over the counter, wide and infectious—)

He needs a smoke. A stiff drink.

There's an ashtray laid out on the table in front of him, a coaster with an empty glass. You're quick to rectify that, sidling up to his spot with a bottle of whisky tucked between your palm and thumb, a bottle of water secured in your grasp by just your pinky looped around the nozzle. 

"You should try my whisky sour," you murmur conversationally—like this is normal. Commonplace. 

It is in a way, he notes. But there's something much too domestic about the way you take him in. Fluffing pillows. Resting a cool hand against a warm forehead. Sweetness bleeds into his teeth, makes them ache. He needs to rinse it away before he gets a cavity. 

"Mm," he mumbles, fingers curling around the glass. The whisky is only slightly chilled—the way he mentioned he liked days ago—and he wonders if you took it out of the cool, let it sit on the shelf, waiting for him. He doesn't know how he feels about the idea of that. Of being waited for. Expected. "Not a fan of that nonsense."

Your head tilts to the side. Narrowed eyes reading him. Trying to sear through the layers that accumulated over the years, thick growths. Barnacles bunched around his body from stagnancy. He wonders what you think you see when you look at him. 

Wonders, then, why he cares so much about what the answer might be. 

John hides it all in a swallow. A gulp of whisky that never stops burning no matter how many times he washes his blues away with a swig of it. Lights a fire in his throat that catches and spreads through his chest, all the way down to his belly. Smoky. Ashes. He wheezes through the burn of it. Let it strip his insides, taking all the pollutants with it. The ones that build up whenever he catches sight of soft, coy smiles, and warm eyes. 

Dangerous if left unchecked. 

"You never know," you say, and he's already forgotten what you were talking about originally. Too many dips into the margins. Too much reading between the lines. "You might like it if you try."

And he knows, immediately, that he would. That he'd order whatever fancy drink you whipped up for him tonight with lemon and liquid cane sugar and a pinch of salt to cut the sweetness (your secret ingredient), and would do it for the rest of his life if he could. Would drink himself into cirrhosis just to see the way you smiled when you made it.  

He swallows it. Chases it down with water. He's always been rather good at that—running. Avoiding the things that make his heart thud, and the back of his neck prickle. 

So, he says: "nah, m'set in my ways." 

And you smile, let him flee. "If you say so." Then, with eyes that drop to the three wrinkles in his collar, and the ambiguous stain on the breast pocket of his shirt, you add: "don't you look nice tonight. Who're you trying to impress?" 

There's an itch under his skin. He paws at his pocket for his cigars. You meet him in the middle with a lighter in your hand, held out to him when he jabs the butt of one between his teeth. He needs the distraction. Needs nicotine to quell his nerves. Smoke-stained apathy. Just enough to soften the urge to do something ill-advised. To say something uncharacteristically flirty, like—

You. If you'll have me. 

(And then desperately. With a quiver in his voice, and blood in his throat; if you'll let me. I'll be so good to you, so, so good—)

"Mechanic," he rumbles, words muffled and gruff from around the end of his cigar. The way the flames catch the softness around the ring of your irises makes him ache in all the wrong ways. "Boat mechanic, specifically. To help fix up Captain."

"Captain?" You echo, brows rising. He leans forward, pushes the tip into the fire; inhales to let it catch. 

"M'ship," he rolls the word around a mouthful of smoke. "My first love."

"Ah," you say with a smile that tugs on the corners of your eyes. "She must be a thing of beauty, then." 

His mouth is already forming the affirmation—yes, she is—and the question—why do you think that?—but you beat him to it with a softness that hints at more, that lays itself bare on the grimy, acetone bleached tabletop:

"To make a man like you so smitten."

And Jesus Christ. 

What is he meant to say to that? How is supposed to respond with his heart in his throat, and pulse in his ears? 

He's too old for this shite, he thinks. Then, not old enough. Not nearly old enough—

"Right," he grumbles, gruff and unfriendly, and everything that's meant to make you stay away for good, to look at him like the sorry sap of an empty man he is. But there's a tint in his words. A blood-drenched fluster. 

You catch pieces of it, and smile behind the counter as you pour another drink. 

"Anyway," he's grasping at anything with knotted hands, something to take the edge off of his nerves. To put distance between this, you and him, and all the things that will eventually come after it. "This mechanic. Know where I can find one?"

The derision that dances across your pretty face has heat blooming in his chest. 

"Look around. This is basically a town hall meeting tonight."

He likes the way you ride sarcasm and sincerity so finely that he always seems to oscillate between believing your words or wondering if you're making a mockery of him. Most of the time, you seem to be—if only to get a rise out of him. To draw out his sense of humour, mordant and drier than a desert. One that pairs quite nicely with your own. 

(Another tip to the scale he tries not to think about.)

So he doesn't. He huffs instead as he ashes his cigar, and reaches for the glass with his other hand. 

"Well, ain't you funny." 

You are, of course. Of course. He thinks about the things you say to him when he comes down for breakfast at noon and dinner well after the sun has set beyond the horizon, making a meal out of the lobster rolls you make for him in the kitchen, the tuna sandwiches. The garlic shrimp. The salmon and rice. Idle comments about the locals—or lack thereof—and their spotty reputation. The history of the town. Of your Province. 

"You love it."

And God help him, he does. He does. He likes the way you drag snorts out from the depths of his chest, clearing out empty cobwebs, and filling the barren space with warmth. Or something like it. Everyone he's met so far always seems to want something from him, but you don't. You don't even make him pay for the extra heaping of lobster you pile on his plate even though he's heard you say it was an extra five dollars to a passing sailor. 

He seems to be your exception, and he doesn't know why. 

(Or maybe he does, but looking at it too closely fills him with dread. The kind he only feels when he finds out a storm cell is headed toward him. When he has to anchor down in a bay and settle the sickness in his guts as Captain is viciously thrown from side to side.

The morning after when he has to clean up the broken pieces and examine the extent of the damage, it's always filled with a sense of moroseness. Uncomfortable, in a way, like the aftermath of a vitriolic row, a devastating argument when he emerges with a sense of uncertainty, no longer quite sure he was justified in the things he said, the anger he felt. But too prideful to apologise. The awkwardness of navigating the ruins of calamity with a sense of regret that blooms alongside his lingering anger.)

So, he does what he does best:

"Not in your lifetime, love." 

He runs. 

Because lying has always come easier to him, hasn't it?

The mechanic is an old man with an accent thicker than his own. 

He speaks entirely in regional colloquialisms that Price can't make sense of. Even when he makes it known that he has no idea what the fuck the man is on about, he just breathes out his nose, as if to say, what can't ye understand about me words? and continues in the same mishmash of something that might be English, but honestly—John doubts it very much. 

Still. He's quick. He checks the hull, the mast. The engine. Checks off a list as he goes, muttering to himself (himself, because John stopped listening after the third, what? Come again? I can't understand you, mate that went entirely ignored save for a few, luh, buddy, I knows yer not stun but yer gettin' me right rotted, ye'are), and then slaps the side of Captain, nodding to himself. 

Three weeks, he says, words stretched out and stressed, like he was speaking to a child. 'ave 'er all fix'd up in t'ree weeks, b'y. 

Three weeks. 

It's in line with the seasons, too. If he times it all just right, he could be eating jerk chicken, curry, and oxtail soup in Jamaica soon enough. It would be stupid to go against the Gulf Stream (something he knows from experience when he was younger and dumber and thought he knew better), but a short stint across the Atlantic to Bermuda would suffice. Then once he's finished, he could set sail to the Azores, and then to Gibraltar, or Portugal, back up to the UK. 

Well, then. 

It's set. 

He hands the man a deposit, and tries not to think about the hourglass looming in the distance. 

Or you. 

(He always has to leave eventually. This, he knows, is no different.)

A routine forms. It's not terrible—not at first. Just an itch in the back of his head, talons raking across the inside of his skull, right behind his eyes. 

It's fine, he reasons, taking his spot at the bar while you bat away grabbing hands reaching for free beer, more booze. In three weeks, this place will be a memory replayed in his mind when the stretch of ocean idles, and loneliness sets in. A soft comfort for him to break into pieces, into regrets and spots of unhinged laughter when the isolation in a wet, unfathomable desert sinks its maw into his psyche. 

He'll resent himself, he's sure; curse the winds and the squalls that threaten to tear his boat into pieces. The idle sense of listlessness that comes with seafaring long distances. 

He's done it enough times to know that between the inexorable sense of freedom and insignificance in the gaping maw of an untamable beast, he always hates himself a little bit for not taking someone with him. 

Solo-sailing is ill-advised, but he's always been a stubborn bastard. Too prickly to be good company, too gruff to care. 

Maybe he'll ring Gaz when gets close to Europe to see if he's up for a stint jaunting through the ocean to see the Caribbean with him. Or Soap if Gaz is still hunkering away with the military. 

(You—

He doesn't think about that. Carves the thought out of his hand as quickly as it forms.)

But even so—

You're a constant on his mind. The first solid presence he's had in months, too. 

Despite his cantankerous disposition—sometimes he finds himself snarling more than conversing; sometimes he has this urge in his blood to lash out, to push things away just to see how far they go—you navigate his mercurial temperament with ease. His shorn, gruff words bounce off of your skin and fall to the countertop where you pick them up between delicate fingers and throw them right back at him—all with a smile. 

See, you seem to say. Nothing you can do will push me away so just shut up already and drink your fucking whisky, old man. 

He doesn't know if he believes you. Or the phantom echo in his head. 

"You're shedding," you murmur, drawing his attention back to you. At his raised brow, you lift your hand up in front of him, thumb and forefinger pinched together. 

It's only when his vision steadies that he sees the single strand of hair wisping up from between the tips of your fingers. A coarse hair of dark brown with lightened tips. 

His hand lifts to his beard, roaming over the wry curls peppered, unkempt, around the bottom half of his face. His moustache is overgrown, eclipsing the entirety of his lips. He feels the wetness from his whisky staining the ends.

You laugh when he pats along his cheek and jaw, as if he could find the missing follicle amid an unruly basin of knotting hair. 

"Ah," he rasps. "Guess I'm in need of a shave."

It's not a priority anymore. Hasn't been since he left the Navy, or when he realised how troublesome it was to try and shave his face while crossing the Atlantic. It just stopped being something he cared much about. 

But he feels the long ends catching on the rough patch of skin around his knuckles. Straggly and whitening at the tips. 

"Maybe," you quip with a shrug, and he can't really place the note in your tone that tries to linger between feigned indifference, but misses the mark entirely. 

You don't say anything else as you drop the fallen strand into the bin behind the counter, but as the night progresses, he catches your eyes straying toward him more often than usual, lingering on the expanse of his covered jaw. Something flashes in those depths—intrigue, maybe; curiosity—and John tries to convince himself it doesn't matter even as he pulls out money from his wallet at the crux of the evening when everyone has gone home, save for himself and you. The only two left in an empty pub. 

It shakes him, somewhat. As if he's only realising just now how normal this has become. For him to wait for you. To walk you to the edge of the boardwalk, where a little cottage sits across a sandy embankment. Home, you told him once. The first night he kept pace with you just to keep the conversation going. 

Never been anywhere else but here, you said, a touch wistful. Must be amazing, then. Going anywhere you like. Always at sea. 

He swallows down something bitter at the memory. Something aching and acrid. Yeah, he murmured when the silence stretched on for too long and he saw the apology forming on your lips. Nice. It's—it's good, yeah.

The years have muted the resentment he felt toward his home. His father, in particular. He doesn't think he's ready to step back into Hereford—maybe not ever—but he might be ready to see the old bastard's grave. Drop a couple of flowers down. 

The memories he has are embedded in thrown cast iron pots. Fist-sized holes in the wall. Sealed with bitterness, resentment.

He didn't know how to summarise all of that into something digestible for you. So, he didn't. Doesn't. 

(Can't, maybe. Won't.)

You'd stopped aiming for personal and instead focused your attention on the things that made him snort. Made him laugh. He can't remember the last time he had a moment to breathe. Land makes him feel claustrophobic. Itches under his skin in a way that drums up the instinct to flee. Or fight. 

But with you—

It's easy. 

It awakens something in him, too. Something that has been there all along, maybe. Lingering on the periphery. One he tried hard to ignore as it raked down his skull, leaving false starts in his bones. 

There's an attraction there, seeding in the gaps between your bodies. One that becomes harder to ignore as the days pass. And how could there not be, when you're pretty in a way that makes him flounder. That makes him want to bend you over the counter just to see what expressions he could pull out of you with a mere touch. The sounds—

Fuck. You'd sound so pretty, he thinks. Has thought. Many times in the sanctuary of his hotel room that stunk of algae and smoke. Images of you splayed out on the sheets, begging him for more—

His hand goes back to his jaw. Feeling the years of accumulated indifference beneath his fingers, and needing something—anything—to take the heat in his belly, the tremble of his hand, away. To keep the thoughts of you at bay, locked up tight for no one else to see. To know. 

John doesn't walk you home that night, opting instead to duck into a drug mart beside the inn, hands burrowed in his pockets, eyes lidded. Narrowed, almost, as he takes in the rows of cheap plastic he'll inevitably find at sea. 

He stands in the aisle for a moment, taking in the mix of English and French on the boxes, and trying to come up with reasons for why this is a good idea—outside of the way it felt to have you look at him with lowered lashes, flickering from his chin, to his jaw, to his cheek: imagining what might be under the bushel of thick, unruly hair. 

It doesn't surprise him that he comes up empty. That his head is filled with nothing but the illicit image of you leaning over him—

Stupid. 

He grabs the first box he sees, crumpling the cardboard from how tight he's clenching his fist. 

It isn't the first time he's thought of you like that, but it is in your presence. With you staring at him, filling in the blanks his uninspired memory couldn't conjure up. Talking to him, too—bloody fucking hell. 

All frayed whispers of: you alright, John? You sure? Well, if you say so. 

There's anger writ across his brow, more so at himself for thinking these things, for feeling them in the first place, but as he stalks toward the counter, frown buried behind a mess of overgrown, unkempt hair, and eyes narrowed into pinched lines, he's sure he makes quite the sight. Must, if the little jump the skittish man behind the register gives when he drops the box with a growled how much? is to go by. 

John's never been good at handling his anger. Trickle-down toxicity, maybe. He's sure some fancy therapist would be overjoyed to tell him all about it—about how he's never had a good role model when it comes to biting his tongue. Never had to, when his last name is enough to pass tests, climb ranks. 

Mean and drunk, his dad was.

And Price—

Well. Sometimes he feels himself getting there, too.

But this. This. It feels different. 

He's not nearly as angry as he is flustered, and like anything he isn't used to, he lashes out. 

John is sure they don't tip at drug stores, but he conveniently forgets his change in place of an apology when he storms out of the shop, ignoring the hesitantly called, uh, sir…? as he goes. 

It's fine, he thinks and tries not to let his mind wander into uncharted territory, musing about what you might have said. Might have done. 

Swatted at him, undoubtedly. Said something scathing about him being a prick for no reason. Put him in his place, kept him there. 

But he doesn't think about that at all. 

John stands in front of the grimy mirror in his hotel room with a brand new razor in hand, staring at himself, and wonders if you'd shave it for him if he asked. If you'd keep him in line during the long stretch of the ocean where everything is an endless crawl of muted grey-green, and take him down to the bathroom in the boat, one that's barely big enough for himself to fit comfortably, and perch him on the toilet while you tended to the too-long wisps of curls growing over his cheeks. 

The thought is an algae bloom in his chest. Ethereal, beautiful. But beneath the marvel of nature's potent splendour lurks a deadly danger—one toxic in its domesticity. 

Still. He latches onto it. Curls his worn fingers around the edges, clinging to rotting driftwood. 

He likes the way it fits in his chest. The shape of you moulding along the barren brackets of his ribs; slotting in like a puzzle piece. It's winsome. Dangerous. But he's always like a challenge. 

Always liked the way some things were meant to hurt. 

(And you—you look like you were made to ruin.)

Hair rains into the stained basin with each cut. Filling the chips in the porcelain, built up from years of carelessness and indelicate hands, until a light dust of burnt umber sits like a layer of snow across the surface, hiding the blemishes below. 

Each inch shorn off seems to regress him in age until he's less an unkempt seafarer, a wild man who feasts on tuna and loses his mind in the middle of the sea, and more like the thirty-something-year-old who still has decades ahead of him to try and regain his footing. 

The contrast is jarring. 

He runs the back of his hand across clean skin and nearly startles at the feeling of something touching that part of his face that was hidden for so long. 

He's reminded about something his dad used to say—nothing like a shave to make a man feel new again—and isn't sure how he likes the sour twist in his gut when he feels the truth in those words, however hollow and artificial they might be. 

The face that stares back at him is different from the one who wore a military uniform all those years ago. Cheeks sunken in. Hollow. Thinner from months at sea. His complexion is darker, sunkissed and tinged slightly red. A permanent sunburn, maybe. He thinks about the woman from Ghana who warned him with a finger pressed softly against the apple of his full cheek about skin cancer. Melanoma. 

Wear sunscreen, she stressed with a shake of her head that sent gorgeous locks of midnight black spilling over her bare shoulders. It reminded him of the deepest parts of the ocean that he crossed. Endless puddles that looked like little jars of ink across the vast expanse of the sea. You're too pale not to be wearing some every day. 

(After he left—twinned hearts torn asunder—he found a bottle of sunscreen stuffed inside his rucksack. It was the only time he can remember crying in some twenty-odd years—)

That man feels almost as distant as the sea is to him now. A memory. A moment when he was willing to carve off the best parts of himself just to make room for the loneliness; the self-flagellation in the form of isolation. What he'd thought he deserved. Maybe still does. 

He isn't sure what thoughts were rattling around inside his head at the time to make him leave the best pieces of himself with a woman who seemed too good to be true, but still wanted him, of all people, by her side. Those, too, feel far too distant to grasp. 

His hand is worn down. Knuckles more scar tissue than skin. Welts lined the inside of his palms—thickened flesh made from grabbing the ends of rope too many times to count as it reeled out of his grasp, cutting deep and cauterising the wound all at the same time. He should have known better, maybe. But when his anchor was tumbling down into an abyss, unattached to its cleat in the middle of the ocean, time for thinking was negligible. Nonexistent, almost. 

The accumulated scars—some from land, most from sea—discolour his skin until it's patches of ivory, pale pink, and mounted brown, all slightly hidden under a thin crop of wry topaz hair. 

His nails are short and lined with boat oil. Dirt. The beds are yellowing from nicotine. 

He scratches the rosy skin of his upper cheek where it meets the cut of patchwork mutton chops. His signature style when he was Captain. When he was responsible for more life than he knew what to do with or knew how to protect. 

(The men he couldn't save always seem to stack higher than the ones he did.)

John sees fragments of his old self in the mirror. Pieces of an incomplete puzzle he thought he left scattered on the battlefield, and then tucked inside a box when he handed in his medals for a trawler (a trawler for a sailboat). The fit is tight. It sits uncomfortably over his new skin—scarred and sunkissed—and he gives himself a moment to wonder about where he'd be in life now had he stayed behind. 

But a moment feels too long. Not long enough. 

He brings the razor up to his cheek and cuts the rest of that man away. 

He isn't him. Not anymore. 

(Hasn't been for a long time.)

The skin of his cheeks sting from the bitter evening winds billowing off the icy Atlantic and he's reminded why he kept his beard overgrown and thick when he was out at sea. 

November is a cruel month, he always found. Cold. Desolate. This close to the ocean, and he feels the chill deep in his bones, even though several layers of leather and fur. It's enough to make his teeth chatter. 

The fur lining the collar of his Levi's jacket does little to stem the vicious onslaught, but he makes a point to bunch his shoulders closer to the bottom of his earlobes in an effort to salvage some heat. Not that there's much to spare. 

But the walk from the inn to the pub is blessedly short, and the brief cold gives him enough time to clear his head. To think about turning back. Stopping whatever it is he thinks he's doing. 

He isn't a young lad. Not anymore. 

He knows this, of course. Knows it enough to feel the ache in his joints. In the raw scar tissue that is always a little tender in colder weather. Still. It wasn't enough to stop him from washing his clothes in the coin laundry of the inn. Buying fabric softener and forest-scented detergent from the grocer. A beanie (toque, he supposes, though he's never heard anyone out East use that word), some cologne—the expensive kind. Tom Ford, the lady at the cosmetic counter said. You look like you'd like this one best. 

He didn't ask why. She didn't tell him. 

It smells good, though. Like new leather, vanilla, and tobacco—a strange concept considering most of the time people couldn't stand the smell whenever he smoked, but maybe that's only in cigars and cigarettes. 

There was a moment when he stood in the washroom, buttoning up his freshly laundered (and newly purchased) shirt when he felt like a fraud. A goddamn muppet. 

This isn't him. He reeks of smoke, salt, and sun-dried sweat. He scrubs his clothes clean with extra shampoo inside the shower on his boat when they start to smell a little too pungent, even for him. He doesn't shave. Barely showers—

Who needs it when he can just anchor on a reef, or a distant, uninhabited island and take a dip in crystalline waters for a few hours? 

He feels—

Stupid. 

But he can't deny there's something a little invigorating about slipping a clean body inside clean clothes. Dressing up like some young lad taking his girl out to see a film, grab a burger to eat. Maybe bum around Liverpool until he had to go back to the barracks. 

He bit his tongue until he tasted iron and slipped on his jacket. Pulled the beanie over his head. Sprayed some cologne on the sleeves. And then kept his head low to avoid anyone's eyes, even though no one in this town has really bothered to get to know him like you had. 

John just feels a bit like a swindler. This isn't him. 

Fancy shirts. Clean jeans. Boots. A new leather jacket. Cologne. Barefaced. It all feels like a hollow pastiche of some clichè role he's trying to fill. Leading man, or something stupid like that Soap might jostle him about. 

Who're ye tryin'ta be, Cap? Tom Hardy, aye?

Fuck. Fuck. He should leave, just go back to his inn—

But the door is already opening. You're looking up, taking him in, and then—

Nothing. You offer a slight nod. No smile. No wave. And then you're looking away, eyes dropping back to the tabletop you're always cleaning despite the stains and the stickiness never going away. 

He expected worse, maybe. His hand reaches up as he steps inside, feeling the uneven skin beneath his palm. Rugged craters. Knicks from the blade when he got too close to his skin. Scars, maybe. Patches of hair he missed. 

He wonders what you thought when you saw it. Chiefly disappointed, perhaps, that whatever image you had in your head of him, all clean-shaven and dressed up, wasn't quite the same as reality. There's a sinking sense of disappointment in his guts, but it's almost minuscule compared to the relief of knowing that you don't care. Maybe it'll be enough to quash whatever has been rotting in the crevasse between you. Crush whatever idealistic notions of him you have in your head. 

John would rather you were bitterly disappointed now than realise it after. Regret. A mistake. It's good. Fine. 

It's only when he takes his usual seat does your head pops up again, eyes cutting across the counter to stare at him. 

And—

Shit. 

The way you look at him knocks the air from his lungs. The deep appraisal, the shock, the curiosity, and the—

"Wow," you whisper, eyes widening. He isn't sure what you think, but he knows that look in your eye; a keenness. Sees it sometime staring back at him in a cup of amber when you don't notice him looking. Shit. Shit.  

He clears his throat, uncomfortable under the intensity of your stare, and tries to soothe his nerves as quickly as he can, patting down for his cigars left somewhere in his pocket. In one of his pockets. Fuck—

"Well," you breathe, and he dreads your words immediately, not quite ready to hear them without something in his veins to dull the pinballing emotions in his chest. "Don't you clean up nice. Didn't recognise you at first."

He grunts. "Yeah, yeah. Talkin' nonsense now, aren't you?"

"Nonsense?" You echo, tone subdued, now. Soft. Too soft. He hates the way it makes his chest feel like it's caving in. "What? A handsome man like you can't take a compliment? That's a surprise."

Handsome. 

He feels his pulse in his throat. Heat under his collar. Something spreads across his skin at words, glueing itself down, uncomfortably tight—constricting, smothering—and he fights the urge to reach up to his neck, clawing at it until it's all gone. Peeled off in strips, taking with it jagged swaths of too-hot flesh. 

Your words are painted with too much sincerity, and it drips over his skin—thick and oily—until he's stained in the offering they make. Drenched in the sudden realisation that this is far too much than he can handle. 

That he needs. 

The way you're looking at him—bare-faced honesty, scoured of anything other than a genuity that trickles into the gaps in his crumbling chest, sticky filament made of saccharine promises and a dizzying sense of open affection—makes him heave; chokes him on the embers of that tantalising what if you let echo in the recess of words. 

It isn't grabbing, or taking what he wants. This is you lying flat on the table. His choice to reach for it. To curl his fingers around the bulk of it, feeling the heat in the palm of his hand. 

And he wants. Oh, how he wants—

But it feels a little bit like a betrayal. Self-sabotage from within as his body turns against him. Feelings conspiring with his whims, the ones that force out their pleads between bloodied teeth; yearning as they rattle the cages of this forced prison. Lost in absentia. 

He can't make sense of the tremors that follow, roaring through his chest in a deluge of innominated emotions that seem to shake the foundation he stands on. He reaches, but can't seem to grasp them. Temporal feelings without cause. Intangible. They slip through the gaps in his fingers. Slide off of his flesh as he was trying to catch mercury in the oil-slick palm of his hand. 

John can't make sense of it. Why him? What's drawing you to him outside of carnal attraction? It's always been there—that magnetic pull: his marrow to yours. 

But for the first time since he traded in medals for oars, he feels the pull back to shore. That unquenchable urge to dip his toes into the sand. To keep his feet firm on dry land. 

The feeling of it itches in the palm of his hand. 

And like most things, he doesn't understand, doesn't agree with, he feels the unrelenting urge to lash out against it. Push back. Carve out some semblance of distance between the thing he doesn't understand, and what it's making him feel.

And then he snaps. Bites back against the headiness admixing in the back of his head; noxious, dangerous. It's a discomfort. A slash of clarity that makes him all too aware of himself. Of you. This. Everything. It's too much. 

So easily swayed by a pretty word. What a damn fool. 

The snort he gives in response is a gnarled mess in his throat, all mangled up and shredded on the barbs of his sudden vexation. "Flatter all the poor sods like this, do you?"

It crackles in his chest. Smouldering embers. Dampened by the blood filling his lungs, choking him on what spills out of the shattered levee. 

This isn't—

Isn't him. It isn't you. 

He feels claws raking across the inside of his skull. Sharpened talons digging vengefully into the back of his sockets until it aches. Forcing him, maybe, to see the aftermath of his anger. 

"No," you say, pulling back. Stepping away from him. Giving him space. Not enough, and entirely too much. A sad echo snakes through the crevasse. Glass breaking. Shattering. He thinks of self-sabotage. Tastes it in the back of his throat. "Just you."

It's mean, awful, when he huffs, asks: "yeah? Why bother?" 

"Why not?" You volley back, and he can't quite place the look in your eye. Disappointment, maybe. Something tinged in regret. "Maybe I want to. Maybe I—"

You don't finish. 

Good, he thinks. Good. Stay away. Far away. 

And softer. Softer still—

It's for your own good. Better off this way. Don't turn around. You'll only end up hating what you see. Regretting what you find—

"Don't know what you're getting yourself into." His words are stagnant. Hollow. The consistency of ash between dry palms. He tries to swallow, but can't. Can't. Gives up instead, adds: "won't like what you find, either." 

You hum and it hurts. "Maybe I might. Can't be all bad under there." 

They're sharpened with an edge of sincerity he can't bring himself to acknowledge, not now; not yet, so he huffs instead, and brings a cigar to his lips just so he doesn't have to respond. Doesn't have to engage again. Can't, he thinks, with a cigar between his lips, stuffing his mouth full. 

A pathetic escape. He's never been the type of man to retreat when it isn't the best option strategically. Or when he has no other choice, and too many men on the line. 

But he can't—

(Knife to his chest, you walk away. 

Blade against his tongue, he says nothing to call you back.)

A fissure sits at the zenith that once was a sense of ease, comfort. It leaks a coldness that shakes him to the core when it drifts over gaping wounds and milky-white bones.  

(All of his own making, of course.)

In the midst of it all, he tries to convince himself that this is the right thing to do despite never being a man of altruism in his life, and the lie pools in his empty gut where it sloshes around in the shots of whisky you still pour for him even though he can he see the cruel lashes of his words striking over your expression when you look at him when you think he isn't watching you back. 

Better this way, and he downs a shot just to ignore the merciless echo that asks, for who?

Both of you. Both. 

Because despite what you might think, or whatever little fantasies you made up inside your head about him, he knows they aren't true. They aren't him. 

A man who climbed ranks on the back of his last name. A borrowed legacy with no honour of his own. One who had no qualms about crossing lines that others couldn't until they blurred, until his morality was a sickly grey. 

Until a prison cell in Siberia rewired the fibres in his head, and he was forced to reconcile the unignorable truth that stripped of his rank and the protection he offers there is barely any discernible difference between him and them. The enemy. 

He thinks of Gaz, and the words he uttered become a portend for the calamity of a man who always seemed overly keen to take things too far. 

It's them or us, he used to say. Them or us—even as he tossed an innocent man over the ledge to fall to his death. As he let a child watch him emasculate his father when he knew pride was all they had left, doing nothing in the end but creating another monster for him to hunt down at a later date. Threatened families. Threatened men. Women, children. 

His punishment was nonexistent. Self-flagellation in the form of exile. He cast himself out to sea and pretended it was enough. 

How is he supposed to pretend who is he isn't? How is he meant to touch you with blood writ in the lines of his palm? 

Selfish. Mean. Cruel. 

So, he lets it rot—just as he does with everything else.

There have been others, of course; but Price has always been attracted to older women. Laugh lines and crows feet; swatches of grey kissing their temples. A certain coldness to their touch. An unspoken understanding that everything that is, and will ever be, between them is temporal. Love was just a crutch. A fallacy uttered in the dark to soothe the rugged parts of themselves that worried they might never be enough. 

He can handle women like that. Prefers them. 

The youngest he's ever dated was a woman his own age, and he realised soon after that there was a disparity between he couldn't placate. One that left scars. 

He's a mangled soul in a young man's body. Rough and callous and unwilling to compromise. He's more scar tissue than man, and what can he offer someone idealistic with inexperience and youth except a bitter tangle of hurt that cuts deep. 

But you're an outlier, he finds. Only shades younger than himself, really, but it's not so much your age, but the way you carry yourself. Heart on your sleeve. Aching for love. 

He can't give that to you. 

The last time he tried, he ended up sneaking out on a woman in Ghana, leaving the pieces of him behind that dared to even try. 

He can't offer you anything that isn't temporary. 

And he thinks that might be fine. Maybe it's all you want from him, anyway—just a night. A moment. A memory to keep. 

But John's always been greedy. The kind that wants, and wants. Once would never be enough, and he knows that if he sunk his teeth into you, a bite would never satiate his rapacious appetite, never quench the hunger. 

And since he can't make a meal out of a morsel, he'd rather starve. 

He thinks about leaving six times in three hours, but you carry on as if nothing has happened even though he catches weariness in your gaze whenever you look at him. His glass is filled but the conversations are bereft of their usual cheekiness. The gaps between are no longer filled with his scored laughter or your amused hums. 

You spend more time away from him than you have since he first sat down. The deviation away from what quickly became a bruised touchstone, laden with clumsy fingerprints is jarring, but he can't claim to be upset by your distance when he was the one who caused the rift in the first place. 

So, he drinks. He smokes his cigar. Tries to not think about why his hand itches in a way that he knows can only be sated by sliding his knuckles across the worn wood of the table, linking his fingers with yours. It's a stupid whim. He swallows it down with a shot of whisky that makes his stomach curdle. Seals it with an inhale of his cigar. Forgotten, now. Covered in ethanol and smoke.  

But even with the crowbar in his hand, he can't stop himself from watching you. Eyes trailing along the paths you carve between old wooden chairs, and scowling men waving their hands at the staticky television set, upset by yet another bad call by the referee. 

(He's always thought it was stereotypical to equate Canada with hockey, moose, bears, geese, and maple syrup but so far, he's seen nothing else play inside the pub—aside from a polar bear warning being issued out for northern Newfoundland—but sometimes, the shoe just fits.)

You sift through the throng carrying drinks in your hand and impish grin at the men you recognise. Words he can't hear, ones he isn't privy to, are spoken softly and reinforced with a small grin. Seeing it on your face, pointed away from him; meant only for another, is a white-hot dagger to guts, scraping across his delicate insides. 

The flashes of anger are directed inward. Each stab is a reminder that they once were for him. That had he not gone and ruined a good thing, dangerous though it might be, you'd have been standing in front of him, curbing nonsensical requests over the bulk of his shoulder, unwilling to leave from your perch across from where he sat. 

(Hindsight is a brutal, bitter mistress, but it has nothing at all on pride.) 

He swallows it. Smokes. Pretends he's interested in the game that plays but it's just flashing colour on an oversaturated screen. A foreign language to his ears despite the words on the chyron flickering past in his mother tongue. 

John thinks about packing it in for the night. Heading back to his empty hotel so he can think about you in peace—in vivid, fantastical images of equilibrium; comfort—and finds that might be for the best. For both of you. Some distance to soothe the ache he caused. To reacclimate back to strangers in a dilapidated pub. A sailor and bartender: ephemeral, the way it ought to be. The way it must. 

With his dwindling pack of cigars slipped into his breast pocket beside the lighter he nicked from you ("people always seem to leave them behind in bars," you'd winked, handing him an ugly lighter in the shape of a bear with a pipe in his plastic mouth. "I picked out the one that made me think of you."), he finds himself at a loss for a reason to stay. All packed up. Ready to leave. 

He raps his scarred knuckles on the table, a final farewell that he can feel heavily in his bones, filled with iron as they may be. Still. Still. It's for the best.

Whose, he still doesn't know. His own, undoubtedly, in that selfish sort of way that makes it feel selfless. Like it's the right thing to do even though he bloody well knows it isn't. Won't be. That he'll think about this moment in time when he's all alone at sea and cuss himself out as he readies for a squall. 

John means to leave, but a man gets to you first. 

The man makes a noise in the back of his throat. A complaint, maybe, but it's swallowed by the creak of the floorboards when he sways on his feet. 

"Listen t'me, you—"

But you're not. You make a move to turn around, and he seems to realise you're not paying him any attention. Anger flickers over his slack face, and he's reaching for you with a clumsy paw before John has time to move. The moment he makes contact, fingers skating off the sleeve of your shirt, he's out of his chair, letting it clatter to the ground. The noise is swallowed by all the chaos. Murmurs, shouts. The music feels so out of place in this moment when he can feel his blood run hot, turning molten in his veins. 

"Hey—!"

But your hand is gripping his wrist, pulling him off of you, before John can finish. Eyes narrowed, jaw set, you shake your head once before pointing to the door with your free hand. 

"It's time for you to leave." 

He pitches a fit. Petulant whinging that cuts through the noise. Vague insults hurtled at you, words of complaint that barely make you flinch. 

John's rushing over before he can even think—thoughts all asunder, bouncing around his head in an unrefined mess of shorn noises and fervent anger—but you stop him with a jerk of your head. No, it says. I don't need you. 

And you don't.

The swelling chaos dims and in the aftermath, he realises he's the only one standing. The only one hovering in your periphery as you shove a man twice your size away from the counter when he tries to swipe a bottle as he leaves. 

Everyone is watching, wary, but there's an unspoken sense of understanding amongst them that makes him feel decidedly like an outsider, and wholly out of the loop. 

Where he's from, if you see someone being harassed, you step in. 

Things, apparently, are very different here. 

He catches your eye when you turn back toward the interior after slamming the door shut, and there's a moment where he almost rushes to your side, checking you over for any marks that man might have left behind, but you're shaking your head before he can even lift his foot from the floorboards. As if you know. And maybe you do. Maybe you know him more than he knows himself. Maybe, maybe—

You give him another shake. No, it says, and the soft quirk of your lip echoes in his head, a soft: down boy that makes him bristle. 

It's telling, of course, that he still heeds your wordless command. Hackles lowering, muscles unfurling from their rigid coil. 

Your nod, then, is a soft purr that rolls through his guts like a marble. Good boy. 

John feels leashed when he settles back into his chair. Anchored. All it takes is a nonverbal cue from you, and suddenly, he's tempered. Tamed. 

As if to reinforce the thought, his hand strays to his chin, feeling the scarred, bare skin under his palm. All done because of a simple glance, a fleeting moment of curiosity from you. 

He isn't sure how he likes the fit of it around his neck. Too tight, maybe. Dangerously claustrophobic. But it sits there, untouched. He has no desire to pull it off. To divorce the collar from his neck. 

(Maybe, maybe, he thinks he could get used to the way it feels.)

As he settles in his chair, his eyes never stray from you, standing lax and unphased against the door, chatting idly to the patrons who murmur in tones too low for him to pick up over the rhythmic echo of the sea shanty and the slew of voices in the background, cheers from the hockey game that hasn't quite held his interest long enough for him to know the score. Nothing is amiss, it seems. As if bullying out men twice your size was a regular occurrence—not even newsworthy enough to pull gazes glued to the flashing television, or stop the minutiae of mindless conversations from happening in sparse passels around the pub. 

But it changed something for him. He feels it in his chest, his guts. Something dislodged from the cornice, falling down inside of him in an endless spiral. A sudden freefall. 

He comes to the startling realisation when you look up at him as you pat someone on the shoulder, smiling softly—all forgiven in an instant, the crevasse sealed over in a thick bed of cobwebs—that he wants. Has wanted since he first lumbered into the pub and was met with a raised brow, and a cheeky wink. Not from around here, are you? and he was gone. 

Lost in the swell of you. 

Your mouth moulds around the words, pleading with him over the heads of everyone else, wait for me.

But John had no plans to go anywhere else. 

"I'm okay," you tell him hours later, hands buried in your pockets, eyes gazing up at the midnight blue sky. "Seriously."

There's a multitude of things he wants to say. All threads of lingering, unresolved anger brought on by that man who put his hands on you. Who thought he could. 

Maybe a little bit of it is directed at you, too, for not letting him rip that man into pieces even though he knows it's not your fault. Leashed, he thinks, and rubs absently at his bare neck. 

"Yeah?" He murmurs, voice raw. Eroded down to bare scraps, scorched and pulsing with the poison of anger. He tries to clear it. Swallows down the acrid tang that coats the back of his throat even still, hours later. 

Your head rolls toward him slowly, chin still held loftily up to the sky, and when your eyes meet, he thinks of rogue waves. Capsizing in the middle of endless azure, exposed to elements and predators. To the murky depths below in burnt sapphire.

He swallows again, but it's hard to get anything down when his heart is in the way. 

"Yeah, John. I'm good."

Your words take the shape of a breath, gently ghosting over a scraped knee. It's not meant to convince, but rather soothe, and something about that, about the softness in your eyes and way you speak tenderly, cautiously, as if he might startle, makes him feel hot beneath his collar. Flustered. Foolish. A litany of things he ought not to feel, but does because it's you. 

(Because it's always been you.)

"Right," he grouses, and tries to find his way out of the canyons inside your eyes. 

It's hard to escape when everything looks the same, when it all beckons him deeper. Stay, stay, it whispers over artfully crafted gorges and deep ravines, a stunning beauty that makes nature feel like a paltry imitation of the carvings in your irises. 

In the sandy shores of a small inlet nearly eclipsed by the sea, you turn to him fully, eyes smouldering embers catching in the flush of the full moon, and say, thank you, John. 

He scratches at the collar around his neck, and thinks about throwing away the key.

"What for?" He says instead, brows knitted together—a perfect pastiche of a fisherman's knot. It's rough: words scraped from the thick of his throat, raw and pulsing and dusted in smoke, but you don't baulk at the artificial ire that oozes between his nicotine-stained teeth. No. You lean into it with a smile. 

"Defending me. Trying to, anyway," you tack on with a small huff at his expense, a finger poking at his inflated pride. In jest, of course, but it still makes him frown. "I guess I just got so used to sticking up for myself that I forgot how nice it was to know someone is looking out for me, you know?" 

"Should be expected." 

There's a heat simmering beneath his tone. An underlying sense of anger that hadn't abated entirely yet, just began slumbering. Dormant, but still burning. Still hot enough to hurt. 

"Maybe," you hum, and the blitheness in your tone makes him bristle. Hackles raising. "But it's probably for the best."

"Tell me how none of those fuckin'—" There's a snarl in the back of his throat. He swallows. "None of them standin' up for you is for the best, 'cause it looked pretty fuckin' cowardly to me."

"If they defend me every time something like that happens, then it'll only be worse when they're not around. Most nights, it's just me working. I gotta know how to take care of myself just fine—"

"—shouldn't bloody 'ave to—!"

"—and I need them to know it, too. That if they try anything like that, I'll kick them out. I won't go screaming for help just because they're being rude. I'll handle it on my own because I have to."

It quiets him. Not enough to quell the anger burning in his chest, or the urge to tear them into pieces for sitting back, watching you get disrespected while they throw peanuts at the television screen, and jeer about something as arbitrary as a fucking game, but he finds something akin to understanding. Common ground. 

It makes sense, suddenly, even though it sets his teeth on edge and makes his knuckles itch. 

"No one else will do it for me, y'know?"

"I will."

The words tumble out before he can make sense of them in his head. A disconnect between his mouth and his thoughts, eroded by the smoke leaking into his throat. The fire in his chest. 

A mistake, maybe, because they're futile. Pointless. More so a whim of pride, a flash of possessiveness just to stroke the smouldering embers of the ego you bruised earlier with the tip of your finger. 

(Or maybe they're the afterbirth of his righteousness; that insatiable beast he conceived into the world he swore he'd save—no matter what—only to realise somewhere after leaking madness into the fibres that he was making more monsters than he was culling. 

A lingering remnant of when he bore the burden of the world on his shoulders during a botched pantomime of Atlas.)

You know it, too. "You won't be around all the time, John."

He tastes salt in the back of his throat. It burns when he swallows. When the words that tore through the seam of his lips dissolve into ash, into smoke. 

Your hand on his shoulder is meant to be placating but it feels like a dagger to his gut. 

"I can take care of myself. Been doin' it all my life, anyway."

He can't make sense of it. Can't understand how your words fill the hollow crevasses inside of him until he feels more like a mortal man than an untouchable mountain. 

You bring him back down to the solidness of land, of the earth. An anchor. 

John touches his neck again. "Yeah," he rasps. "I get it. Now, let's get you home."

He thinks about you. 

A lot would be an understatement considering how many times he's taken you to bed, pulled you down into the sheets with him. Tangled limbs. Rushed breath. He thinks of you now, too, with heavy eyes and a little smile, beckoning him forward. 

His own illicit sanctuary. A place in his head where he ruins you over, and over, and over again until there's a permanent stain on the tips of his fingers, the back of his throat. A constant reminder of you—the way you smell, sound, taste—

It's been a while since he had a moment like this, when he could relax, feel himself—already half-hard when he palms himself through his boxers—and just—

Lose himself. Body melting into the sheets. Tension bleeding together into one mass that pools in his lower belly, coalescing into a tight knot in his groin. It spools, pulls taut, when he runs the flat of his palm down the length of himself until he meets the soft flesh of his perineum. 

It's easy to tilt his chin up, eyes gazing at the seashell colouring of the popcorn ceiling, stroking himself in slow, unhurried rolls of his hand, and thinking of you. Your hand on him. Your breath tickling his ear, spurring him on. 

"Come on, John," you'd say in that voice made to bring him to his knees. "You can go faster than that, can't you?"

He responds instantly to the faint echo in his head, grunting at the pleasure that races down his spine. Tugging on that tightly wound knot until it trembles. 

His hand around the length of him is replaced with yours. Tentative, exploratory strokes from frenulum to his thickened base; up, up, a teasing swipe of your thumb across his weeping slit but only enough to make his hips arch off the bed, and then you pull away, down. Down. Over and over again. He thinks of the way your breath would feel ghosting over his temple. The press of your chest when you leave over his shoulder. 

John rocks into it, hips undulating with each pass of the hand that is too gnarled, too scarred to be yours; lost in the fantasy of your presence around him, on him, in him. 

Maybe your other arm would be tucked under the nape of his neck, bracketing him into your body. A safety net. A security blanket. You'd toy with his cheek—twee and gentle; a ginger touch to offset the illicit press of your thumb into his frenulum. Lean over, too, perhaps, and press those inviting lips to his. A soft kiss. Barely a whisper. A brush.

His tongue rolls over his bottom lip, chasing the phantom taste of you that isn't there. He imagines you'd taste like the sea. Briny, but mild. Salted winter melon. A sweetness, too, beneath the tart tang of iodine, but one that was metallic—copper. Iron. 

Pleasure knots in his groin—tighter, tighter, tighter—and even with each stroke a pale imitation of your warm flesh on him, he finds the spooling coil building in a quick crescendo of bliss to be somehow more potent than it ever was. A feverish heat at the mere thought of you. 

It builds. Builds. And breaks—

Your name is a broken snarl in the back of his throat as he spills over himself in thick, molten ropes. Each pulse of his heart floods more liquid heat onto his hand (hot enough, maybe, to burn), and he leans into the sudden deluge of a chemical frenzy ripping through his synopses—all liquid euphoria, static endorphins, and a heady rush of dopamine that makes the edges of his vision blur just a touch when he blinks his tired, heavy, eyes open, staring back up at the off-white ceiling. 

The surge and plummet of adrenaline leaves him feeling fatigued. A bone-deep torpor that comes swiftly in the simmering aftershocks of his pleasure. 

He could close his eyes now and sleep—even with the mess on his hand, come cooling against his heated flesh, growing tacky and uncomfortably wet as it sat there. The idea is more appealing than standing up and washing himself down, and in his sudden languor, he haphazardly lifts his hand away from his still-throbbing cock softening against his damp thigh, and pats the mess on his hand against the extra pillow he doesn't use. It's hardly the cleanup he needs, and he knows washing the dry come from the coarse hair on his thighs and groin is going be a nuisance in the morning, but he can't muster the energy to open his lids past half-mast let alone stand and hobble his way into the washroom. 

(And maybe he doesn't want to see himself in the mirror right now. Doesn't want to contend with the same routine of thinking of you, getting off to the thought alone, and then slinking into the tub for a quick rinse of his regrets. Not tonight, anyway—)

So, he stays in bed, laying there in his own filth, and still thinks of you. With his eyes closed tight, he doesn't have to face the reality of your absence. Of his dirty whim that sullied you in his head (over and over and over again—). His loneliness. 

And it's nice to bask in the glow. To imagine you beside him still. 

John's never been as delusional as now when he can taste the Caribbean sun on his tongue. Feel the salt on his skin. He smells sand. Feels it under his back as he lays down with you curled over him, hand tucked against his chest where it belongs. Dosing under the shaded pyre. You'll catch fish in the morning. He'll take you out to places you'd never been, all of them. Every single one. Until the world is shaded with your fingerprints. 

He's never been much into lyricism, but you make him contemplate the dividing line between prose and poetry, and where he fits between the two. The bridge, he thinks. The gaps between words, the space between letters: heart and soul (and the tangibility of them both). 

He wants to go there with you. 

The vision of you laying with him in sand embeds itself in the weakened link of his splintering resolve, eroding the chain away until it breaks, and the next night finds him sitting in the same spot, drinking the same whiskey, but his thoughts are subsumed by you. 

Without it keeping him at bay, he makes a terrible decision—one he wishes he could blame on whisky, but he's sober in a way he hasn't been in years—but when he looks up at you, twenty minutes past closing after everyone has stumbled out of the pub, something blooms in his veins. 

It's white-hot—hotter than the sensation of being shot in the thigh by a stray bullet when he was still figuring himself out in a battlefield—and dredges up dormant feelings he hasn't made room for since he was twenty-seven and fell in love in Ghana. 

It's cacoëthes. 

(But maybe it's been heading forward this all along. Ever since he saw you tug around a man twice your size, and wanted to bruise his knuckles on this stranger's enamel. The one who dared touch you. Disrespect you.)

John makes the awful choice to kiss you.

It starts with a look. 

The night ends later than usual—a hockey game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Ottawa Senators draws a big, rowdy crowd of nearly fifteen people ("truly record-breaking numbers," you quip with a grin) that bemusingly celebrate the Senators' victory and mourn the Penguin's loss at the same time ("it's a cultural thing—Sydney Crosby plays for the Penguin's," you tell him as if it explains everything)—and when he finally pockets his cigars, the sky outside is already dusted with crops of mauve as the hazy sun tries to blink through the thick clouds of gunmetal and charcoal. 

You wave to the fishermen on the boardwalk as they prepare their empty lobster cages for the morning haul, and he tries to think of every reason why he shouldn't be standing with you right now, puffing away on one of his last few cigars. 

There are multitudes, of course, all of them eagerly buoying to the surface, and just as viable as the last. Just as concrete. But that's the thing about desire, isn't it? Reasoning is skewed. Malleable. For each con that is squashed by the claws of fatigue, a pro subsumes in its stead. They add up. The scales tip. And all at once, he's no longer oscillating between no and here's why, but how come. 

How come he can't give in, if only just once? 

But once will never be enough. He knows this. He knows it, and yet—

When John happens to glance at you from the corner of his eye, he finds you turned to him already. Watching him. 

Despite what the furious stutter in his chest at this bare appraisal would lead him to believe, this isn't anything new. 

(Neither is his reaction. The blood rushing in his ears. The hiccup of his heartbeat.)

You've always unabashedly worn your curiosity like this. Open, bare. Letting it moulder on the very ledge of a cornice for all to see when they looked into your eyes. Liquid gems, molten coins. They've always gleamed with a sense of misplaced curiosity whenever they rested on him; seemingly lost in the labyrinth of your thoughts as you tried to unravel the reef knot that is John Price. 

He supposes it's the novelty of a man washing up on shore in the middle of what's meant to be the most boring season of the year—your words, naturally. Nothing ever happens during hurricane season, you mentioned to him once. The maritime is quickly forgotten about until summer when stupid tourists head to Halifax or Peggy's Cove in droves. 

Until him, that is. 

(Until you, as well.)

But the look you grace him with right now is somehow on the precipice of being both foreign and familiar at the same time. A muddled sense of jamais vu that seems to wrap itself around his throat, pressing taut to his pulse. Mocking him. Confusing him. It's all a muddled mess of known and unknown and—

Want to know. Need to.

He knows this look. Knows it as intimately as he knows the hand he used to stroke himself, pretending it was you. Your touch. It's want. It's—

Desire. 

Intrigue. 

You stare at him—unabashedly, as always; lost in your perplexing keenness for him, for the man he is (and the one he definitely isn't)—and John sees that same, misplaced rapaciousness in the shaded valleys and unfathomably deep ravines. It's an almost visceral hunger that seems to eclipse everything else; colouring the topography of your gaze in its wake. The glittering scales of a meandering coelacanth. 

Getting caught looking at him in such a way does little to embarrass you. If anything, having his eyes meet yours seems to subsume want with need, merging the two until all that gazes back at him from that prismatic abyss is desire crushed into diamonds from the absolute pressure that leaks from the black holes in the centre. 

He's been warned before about sirens and sea monsters, but standing in front of him with the raging ocean as your backdrop, he finds he cares very little for portends after all. 

John gives you every chance to pull away, to tell him this is a mistake, that you don't feel the same way, that you couldn't possibly do this, but you ignore all of them. Every single one until his hand is around your waist, the other cupping your jaw, and your breath is on his tongue. 

You make the first move. He doesn't know why that surprises him—you have this way about you that reminds him of rogue waves: an untameable suddenness, brash in everything you do; untempered by man and their flimsy metal cups in the ocean—but when you curl your fingers into the Sherpa lapels of his jacket, and wrench him into your sphere, tidally locked in your pull, he finds himself adrift. Lost. The only thing keeping him steady is you. Your touch. 

Your lips are searing when they bite into his, bruising and all-consuming. He likes the burn of it.

It's a kiss just as much as it is a slap to the mouth. A reprimand. How dare you keep me waiting? And somewhere deep in his chest, something unfurls. Something comes loose. Wants to apologise, wants to beg forgiveness, but the words are stifled by your lips sliding against his, your fingers touching the parts of his cheeks that haven't known the feeling of another since he was twenty and grew it out as long as he could get away with it in the military. You hold him. Anchor him in place as you take, as you badger his body into yours, trying to syphon all of the air from his feeble lungs. 

He lets you, rocking with your demands the same way he would a sudden squall, his body a ship in the vast clutch of your ocean. 

The tip of your nose slots into the corner of his own when you tilt your head into the kiss, tongue sliding, liquid, molten, against the seam of his mouth. Humid breath paints the skin under his eye until it's tacky with condensation, and he wants to feel your breath on him everywhere. Wants to touch the places your breath ghosted over with bare fingers to feel the remnants of what you left behind. 

(He wants it to stain him. Leave a permanent mark for all to see. A sailor claimed by the sea, by rogue waves, and the embodiment of a pelagic calamity in the shape of you.)

His lips part just enough to let the tip of your tongue slide in, to touch his in a gentle kiss. A perfunctory greeting for what will, hopefully, become routine because he knows what you taste like now—seagrass, fennel and yew arils—and doesn't think he has the strength to let it go. A new addiction forms somewhere in the catastrophe of his hindbrain, the same place that yearns for nicotine and alcohol to blur the rugged edges of a childhood he can't quite manage to let go of. One that bled putrid blood into his adolescence, his adulthood. That makes running his first thought in the face of anything that has the capacity to heal. Or sacrifice himself for some greater good he could never really bring himself to believe in, despite the words he preached like a scratched record—we dirty our hands so theirs stays clean. A fallacy, of course, like many things in his life. A broken, fractured homunculi trying to navigate a world it wasn't made for. 

But you soothe those parts, don't you? Palliative comfort in the shape of something that has the measure to hurt, to ruin. 

—and fuck, does he want to be ruined by you—

You pull away from him as if you can taste his debauchery, his need, on your tongue and want to skewer him through the heart with it. The distance feels vacant and endless: a devastating bergschrund.   

You blink at him, eyes heavy and full of promises, of wants. The sight of your red tongue brushing over your wet bottom lip nearly makes him ascend to some spectral plane of existence where nothing but the alluring sight of you lives in his consciousness, and it's only your hushed words—raw and tempered—that reign him in. 

"Come back to my house, John."

It's not a question. He knows it in his bones. Just like he knows it could never be one—never—because doesn't have the willpower to say no. And you know this, of course. Have known it from the beginning when you peeled back the rotting layers, flaying his walls from his skin just to learn his name. 

("It's Price," he growled out, words masticating between clenched teeth. "John Price.")

He wears his want in cinder and ash. Feels the fever under his skin.  "Fuck—," he rasps, throat scorched. Brittle charcoal. The words taste like wood chips on his tongue. "What are we waitin' for then, love?"

The billowing sea breeze howls outside of your small house on the mouth of the inlet, an enchanting soundscape that seems to amplify the soft noises that spill from your lips at his touch. 

You burn like the sun bearing down on the desert of the ocean, and he feels your scorching presence between the split of his shoulder blades, liquifying the knobs of his spine until it pools in the clefts of his back. 

Boneless, broken, he loses all sense of himself as he ruts into you like a man who's never been touched before in his life—clumsy, selfish, and unpractised. Your pleasure is the equinox in the centre of his head, a reachable goal he strives for, but each shudder that leaves the column of your throat seems to shatter him into fragments. He wants, wants, wants: there's a war in his head, in his touch. Greedily, he learns your topography until it's ingrained in his marrow. Until he knows where each dip and fold, every scar and blemish, on your skin sits, waiting for the worship of his touch. 

He yields to you. Offers himself up at your altar—yours for the taking—until his sacrifice is met in seasalt and bliss. It's by this flickering dawn that spills into your bedroom window, the one that faces parallel to the sea—always there, in the corner of his eye—where his resolve is laid to rest on a bier. 

It burns on the pyre when your fingers thread through his hair, gripping tight as he falls into pieces in your arms, buried as deep inside of you as he can get. And it's here, safe in the bracket of your legs, spread wide to accommodate the staggering bulk of his body, he finds both nirvana and damnation—his own personal hell nestled in the crux of your thighs.

"Stay the night," you whisper to him, the command slurred on the tobacco that leaks from the burning tip of his cigar. 

One down, he counts; two more to go. The sight of the dwindling pack seems to notch inside his aching ribs, bruised with the cuts you made into his marrow until a scar in the shape of your name formed, seems like a portend. 

He stares at the brittle pieces of the tobacco leaves in the metal tin like they might divine the ancient wisdom of augers and the seers who gleaned hidden truths and hindsight in a teacup, but all he gets is the heady scent of nicotine for his search. 

"Mm." 

Your hands press against his naked back, feeling the taut muscles flex under your touch before they move around his midsection, fingers digging into the plush flesh of his belly—too much lobster rolls, he'd snarked when your teeth sunk into the softness put there by you; a fullness he hasn't felt since he was eighteen. You knead his skin, thumbing over the indents of your teeth, a perfect tattoo, before you hum in satisfaction, the sound of a cat eating its catch, that makes his spine thrum. 

"Good," you husk into his shoulder blade, teeth peppering nips across his sun scorched skin. "'cause I'm not done with you yet, John."

He shudders. "Fuck, love—gonna send me into an early grave."

It draws a simmering chuckle from deep within your chest. Sparking embers. The heat thrills him. 

"A lovely way to go," you murmur, hands drawing intricate webs over his torso, tangling through the coarse hair that gathers in dark swaths of brown across his body. "And I'll even give you a proper sea burial."

The thought alone strips his soul from this prison of bone and flesh. To be known so innately is a dangerous thing, he finds; so deceptively addicting, so achingly good, and he wants to run from it just as much as he wants to bask in the feeling. 

His soul is hungering for something he's never tasted before—until now, until you—and that unquenchable devotion glues to the very essence of him; a tick burrowing into his skin until it rots. 

He fucks you against the window running parallel to the sea instead. Unmaking himself in the clutch of you until your fingers thread him back into some semblance of a man with a soul made for the sea. 

(A place he wants to go with you.)

The unread tobacco leaves in bone china end up spelling out the end in a red flash on his phone. 

A voicemail is a cruel reminder of the looming deadline on the horizon. 

Fixed 'er up fer ya, b'y. She'll be ready in a night or two. Right time for lobster, too, yeah? Anyhoo, call me when you get this. 

What was once anticipatory now feels too much like being caught under a guillotine. He pretends his hands are not shaking when he calls the man back.

The man meets him by the harbour. 

"Should take 'er out," he says, wiggling a tooth pick between his teeth. "You know 'er be'er than I do. Make sure she's good t'go, ya'know?"

He hums something that might sound like an assent to unpractised ears, but the false starts in his rib cage flares up, a deep ache that rattles through the scarred brackets and leaves the seam of his mouth in a muted snarl of discontent.

Ready to go, he thinks a touch cruelly in a shorn off form of self-harm. Just to make it hurt. Just to feel it agony ripping through the gaps between his bones. 

Right. Right. 

How is he supposed to leave when he left so much of himself inside of you?

"Come with me tomorrow. Want to show you something."

"Oh, yeah?" You murmur, brows bunching together in a way that makes his teeth ache. "And what's that?"

His thumb brushes your pulse. "Mm, 'bout time you met Captain."

Newfoundland lingers in the backdrop for most of the day, rising above the waters in a rocky formation of evergreen against dark blue. 

You spend most of it leaning against the port, eyes wide in wonder at the absence of land, a mere pinprick in the vast sea, and he wonders if anyone has ever taken you out this far. Showed you something this haunting, this mesmerising. 

(Selfishly, stupidly, he hopes he's the first.)

The sea is calm. Almost eerily so, but he basks in the gentle rolls of the waves, the serene waters. It's picturesque in a way, the sight of an old postcard with a basin of pure azure and molten yellow sun, haloed in soft rings of ocean. 

As you fawn at the beauty around you, quiet in your musings, he grabs his fishing pole and sets out to catch dinner. John hasn't looked too deep into coastal fishing laws, but from your soft snort, he thinks it might just be on the side of illegal. Still. The coast guard isn't around, and he doesn't think you'll tell on him—at least not if he catches you a salmon and makes you an accomplice. 

The day dwadles, sun fading into a stunning sunset. 

He catches Atlantic Salmon, and spots a commercial lobster trawler in the distance. When he radios over, they offer a trade. Salmon for lobster. You laugh as the men toss over a cooler full of fat lobster for a wriggling salmon that nearly slips from his grasp. 

It's in this exchange—and a day on the water—that he realises just how much he missed this. This. Being on the water. Dependant on no one but his own knowledge, his foresight. Always just on the side of illegal in coastal waters. Making trades, and bartering for dinner. It's peace. Or as close of an approximation a man like him might deserve. 

A tried and true native of the land, raised on fish and crustaceans, you teach him the proper way to prepare lobster and Atlantic Salmon, sucking your teeth at his lack of spices in his threadbare cupboards. You make do, and he can't remember the last time he had something this good. 

"Just wait," you huff. "When I have a full kitchen with proper seasonings, I'll make you something even better."

There's a tightness in his chest at the prospect of next time. "Can't wait." 

It's a lie. Barefaced and ugly. 

He offers beer instead. Brings out some of his hidden whisky. 

"Not gonna be too drunk to get us back home, are you?"

Home. He is home. Has been since he kicked off from the marina, his hands curled around the leather steering wheel. The bumps of the waves against the hill. 

He wonders what you think about all of this; his kingdom at sea is nothing special. Modest, in many ways. Sometimes the toilet in the washroom leaks. He only really has warm water on Tuesdays. Something with the tides, probably. Spiders have taken a permanent refuge in the closet adjacent to the kitchenette. He thinks he might have some exotic stowaway lurking somewhere, too. A mouse of some kind, maybe, from when he was in Madagascar for a brief interlude. 

The boat is never still, always rolling with the waves. Rocking. He's grown used to the feeling of it. Much too accustomed to always moving, never being still, to ever feel any modicum of comfort on land. 

Thinking about it, about returning back to the inn tonight when the water is this serene, and the moon is this sull, pitches something ugly in his chest. Reluctance. And maybe the urge to show off. To share. 

"Want to spend the night?" 

You make a comical picture with your fingers tugging desperately on the cork of a wine bottle you found under the sink, blinking at him owlishly as you process his request, and he smothers a laugh in his chest at the sight. He knows if he lets it out he'll never look at wine or owls without thinking about you, but maybe you're already ingrained in his head. Stuck there in places he can't reach, can't scrape out. 

"What?" You ask, lightly. "Out here?"

"Why not? We're close to the Labrador Strait, too. Could drop anchor now. Head back in the morning."

"Is it—?" You stop yourself from finishing with a shake of your head, and a sheepish smile. "Nevermind. Yeah, um. Yeah, I'd—I'd really like that, actually."

Is it safe, he knows you were going to ask. The question would have made him roll his eyes, and bark out something that could have been a snort of derision or a condescending laugh. He was a bloody marine, he'd have griped. I know these waters better'n I know Liverpool.

But you didn't. You didn't ask. 

The harshness of the nevermind sounded like a self-admonishment for even asking such a thing. It's possible he's reading too much between the lines, but he likes the implicit trust that bleeds through—a touch of hesitation stifled by the immediate certainty that John will keep you safe. 

He likes the fit of it. The way it curls around his pride. 

"C'mon," he murmurs. "I'll show you around."

"It's small," he grouses, a touch uncomfortable as you patter around the bedroom that's barely bigger than a linen closet. It smells like him, he reckons. All smoke, tobacco, and stale sweat. Nothing pretty—not like your sheets that smell of fresh pine resin, or your room the scent of cornflower. 

The ship itself is considered a luxury on the ocean—old, but meticulously maintained—and its age bleeds through the panelled walls, and the clumsy decor. Built largely for dedicated seafarers, the cabin boasts two bedrooms (the captain's quarters being the largest, and the crewmates dorms still stained with rust from where the nails keeping the bunk beds in place during listing started to erode), a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a small space inside the helm that could be considered a small living room—squinting, of course, required. Still. It's home. It's—

The manifestation of his pride. His loneliness. His wants. 

(The walls are drenched in his madness. Do you see his ghosts when you look around—)

"It's cosy," you volley back, barely paying him much attention as you prod at his bare-bones; his sanctuary. He pretends the words don't stroke his ego in the perfect way. "It must be quite the sight to wake up to a sunrise on the sea." 

"Mm, it is."

It's unlike anything he'd ever seen before. A nearly endless roll of cerulean in all directions that almost blends seamlessly with the cyanic sky. Plumes of sea clouds. Birds swooping overhead. 

Often, he finds curious sea creatures coming up from the depths to investigate his boat. Pods of playful dolphins arching through the waves. A mother whale and her calf, nearly the length of his sixty-foot sailer. Rays. The occasional shark when he's fishing, lured in by the struggles and the flash of blood in the water. The feeder fish congregate beneath his boat, picking at the barnacles growing or the smaller fish gathering there for safety. It becomes its own ecosystem after a while, drawing in Remoras, various sharks, tropical fish, and barracuda. 

He mostly gets avian visitors resting on his hull. Great Albatrosses and Cormorants. The odd Pelican closer to shore. Mollymawks, Northern fulmar. 

The open ocean is a vast desert. Sometimes he goes days without seeing any signs of life. It comes with a sense of peace that is indescribable—an awe deep-rooted in his bones, one tinged with fear of the yawning abyss that rolls out in all directions as he knows, without a doubt, that he is less than a mere pinprick in the sea. Humbling. Awe-inspiring. It all coalesces into an experience he can't put into words. One that he yearns for when he's on dry land. 

One that he wants to show you. To share with you. 

A silly whim, of course. Strangers don't traverse the pelagic zone together. 

He shakes it off. Recalibrates. Tries to centre himself, and shuck the thoughts of waking up to a perpetual sunrise with you. The ochre crest of it illuminates a deep blue sea for miles and miles; bare from pollutants that seep into the aether near the coast. Lights that dim the coruscating beauty above. 

But as much as he thinks sunrises and sunsets are a thing of beauty, he knows there's something else you'll like much more. 

"C'mon," he rasps, words sticking to his dry throat. "Wanna show you somethin'."

You don't hesitate this time. "Lead the way, captain."

(And oh, how the coy honorific rumbles through his marrow.)

That something is the reason he became so addicted to the sea. It's a darkness unlike anything else he'd ever experienced before—a complete absence of light that usually pollutes the sky in the cities, one that people often think is escapable in the countryside away from bustling metropolises. 

That has nothing on the ocean after dusk. 

To describe the sensation would be pitch blackness. A black hole. Everything is swallowed up by it—complete antimatter—until the horizon and ocean merge together in an unfathomable pit of tenebrousness. It looks like spilled ink across a page, everywhere the eye turns is shrouded. Indescribable. 

When he's in an inlet, or off the coast of an inhabited island, he used to turn the floodlights of his ship off just to see what he couldn't see, and it was endless. A vacuum. Terror drenched over him in almost equal measure to the absolute awe that rolled through his chest like a tsunami. 

It was the infinite darkness of space mirrored on earth. An uncanny image. Pure nothingness.

There was more light when he closed his eyes than when he had them wide open. Phosphenes brighter than the world around him. 

A harrowing, everpresent experience that notched false starts into the parentheses of his ribs, and made him ache when he wasn't surrounded by water. 

He keeps only the navigation lights on when he leads you to the deck, and the sharp gasp he hears makes him burn, knowing exactly what you must be seeing. Feeling. 

Even at the very tip of the ocean, barely with your toes in the vast abyss, the absence of light pollution gives way to a stunning artefact in the ancient sky. Nebulae clouds. Gleaming stars. In the distance, he spots the coruscating light of Mars, visible to the naked eye. 

The moon sits in the equinox, casting out a blanket of light over the rhythmic swell of the still-black water. It paints the surface lily white. 

He stands beside you, eyes greedily taking in every flickering emotion across your awe-slacked face. Each expression categorised and filed away. A preview to the experience going inside you as you gaze up at the night sky. 

"John…" it's a hushed whisper, drenched in a reverence so thick, so palpable, he thinks he can reach out and catch the ghosts of your wonder on the tips of his fingers. "It's…"

You trail off, but he knows. He knows. 

His hand brushes yours. "Beautiful, ain't it?"

Wordless, and maybe a little bit speechless, you nod, eyes still fixed on the indistinguishable horizon as your hands slip into his. 

The stars are still caught in your eyes even after he leads you to a small sitting area with steps leading into the water. He warns you about sea lamprey and cookie cutter sharks when you try to dip your feet into the basin, laughing at the small squeak you give when you wrench your toes out of the water, drawing your knees tight to your chest. 

Sharks hunt at night, he reminds you with the same cadence as a conman. 

The sideward glance you give in response to his mirth spumes a strange effervescent feeling in the pit of his chest. Humour for the sake of it. He can easily imagine many nights like this with you, basking in the bloom of the ocean, the splashes in the distance, the steady rock of waves licking against the boat, and it's something that seems to syphon the breath from his lungs, knocking him offkilter for a moment. Skewing his perspective. 

It's odd, he finds, to be so attune with someone so fast. To connect on a level that feels deeper than what it is. It jars him as it shatters through that ironclad resolve he wore around his heart.

"Why the sea?" You ask after a moment, thumb skating through the pebbles of condensation that gathers around your bottle. 

The sight of your wet finger shouldn't be as enticing as it is, but the way you stroke the nozzle makes his stomach burn with a heat he hasn't felt in a while. It's gentle. Soft. He wonders if you'd be that tender with him—

The thought is shattered when you glance at him, eyes searching for an answer hidden in blooming blue. There's muted curiosity eked into the divot between your brow—unconsciously done—and he forces himself to turn away lest he reach out and soothe the wrinkle for you. 

(You never know how much you furrow your brow around him. Price isn't sure if that's a portend, some archaic warning of the inevitable frustration you'll feel toward when all of this is over. When the hurricane season passes, and the waters are once again chartable—

Another thing he doesn't want to think about.)

He chews on the question for a moment, making a show of reaching for the—nearly empty—carton of cigars from his breast pocket (another run to Cuba is imminent, he reasons, and tries to convince himself he's not stalling). Deft, practised fingers pull one out, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger as he measures just how much of himself he wants to give away to you. 

(All of it. Every part—)

The paper absorbs the whisky staining his lips when he skewers it between his teeth, a futile effort to keep the hollowness between his lungs and ribs from aching. He thinks about blaming the curdling weight in his stomach on the thought of a ruined cigar—soaked tobacco won't draw as good as dry—but he knows himself better than that. 

It's the suddenness of your query, maybe, but a part of him had been waiting for this very question from the onset of—this. You, him. Together. It seems to be one of those things that just comes up, doesn't it? An unavoidable collision into abject disappointment. 

In all his past flings—calling any of them relationships feels juvenile for what it was: quick, ephemeral pleasure in a foreign land, always lasting just long enough to patch up his boat; he won't disrespect the partners he had by giving it more potency than it deserved—this had been the epoch. The moment when they realised he was never really in it. That his foot was already slipping over the ledge of his boat, head full of the places he'd go next. Always alone. Without company. 

Some take it in stride. They know not to expect much in terms of commitment, or loyalty, from a man who reeks of the sea, and wobbles on land. They don't begrudge him the briefness of the affair, or the lack of a promise to write, or call, or see them again, some other time. When you pass through here next… always seems to be the sentiment at the cronis. The end of them. It never goes anywhere, but it's never finished, either—because it never really began, did it?

He rarely goes to the same place twice unless he needs to (Barbadian whisky, Cuban cigars, fish and chips in Liverpool for the holidays notwithstanding). 

And despite how many times he's been asked this very same question, usually with less clothes on, he never really has an answer. Not one that's enough. 

"Where else would I be?" He muses instead, blinking up at the indigo sky. It's an unforgiving nothingness up there, too, isn't it? "Workin' some job in an office? Military? Nah, would bore me too much. M'better off at sea."

"All alone?" You fill the gap he didn't realise he left empty. "Isn't that—"

He doesn't think he can bear to hear you say it—

"Yeah." 

—so he doesn't let you. 

His cigar tastes stale. Wet tobacco. Ashes. He draws in a deep hit on the next inhale but it curdles in his mouth, leaks poison into his bloodstream. He feels dizzy with it. Offkilter. 

When he invited you to see his ship, half of it was—admittedly—a euphemism. A thinly veiled come on. A facsimile of romance. Who wouldn't, afterall, want to drift out to the open ocean, making love—or some sad version of it—under the stars on a clear night. 

He'd take you to the spot where land was swallowed wholly by the horizon, until all you could see was the midnight blue ocean pressing down on all sides. Gentle waves rocking the ship. The stars coruscating in the indigo sky like glittering diamonds held up to the light. The murky haze of Juniper in the distance. A splash from a whale breaching the surface. 

It would have been a nice evening. He'd have drinked whisky with you—smuggled out from his secret stash of the best kind you could find in the Caribbean—and taught you how to smoke a cigar. 

You'd have laid down beneath the stars, head swimming with the buzz of alcohol. John would have leaned over you, charting the open awe in your gaze as you stared up at the heavens. 

Maybe you would have tried to ask a question, or marvel at the wonders of the world that might have only ever been seen by you. The first person to take in this view in all of history. Considering the vastitude of the ocean, it would be a real possibility. The very first. He'd give that to you. The first, the last, the only. All yours. 

In return, he'd steal a kiss. Swallowing the question from your lips with a slow, sensual roll of his tongue grazing yours. All coy and soft. Saccharine. You'd taste of whisky. He'd drink you down in several mouthfuls, unable to get enough, until you were keening into the night, begging for more. More, John, more. 

It blankets his thoughts, and the regret he feels at the loss is potent. Fragments of a good night flash before him—your fingers curling around the quilt he laid out on the deck, digging those talons into the meat of his shoulder until it breaks skin: a permanent scar. A jagged, silver meteor across milky flesh; he'd catch a glimpse in the mirror and think of you. Whisper-soft kisses. Your body opening up for him, eager and needy, calling out in a siren's song for more. 

(Who is he to deny you when you beg so prettily?)

Instead it metastasises inside of him. Malignant and pestiferous. Leaks rot into his bloodstream until all he can taste is the petrified residuum of regret, bitter and acrid. 

Some selfish part wanted something nice for himself. A respite from the eventual end careening toward him at a speed he can't avoid. 

The ruined tatters of it simmers in the air. A noxious miasma that seems to shake something inside of you loose. Maybe you see it, too. The loss. The end. The eventuality of a bitter, and quick, conclusion. 

You're quiet even as realisation darkens across your brow. Flattens the awe in your eyes with the cold douse of water to a burning flame. Clumped ash piles around a damp campfire. 

The flames were not smothered slowly, gently, like they should have been, like he wanted them to. No. No. They were snuffed out in a quick end. Brutal and unforgivable. 

And you say: "oh." 

As if you get it, but you don't. You don't because you think about forever when you look at him. It's not your fault, though—never. Because he hasn't said a word about leaving even though it stuck to his teeth, tarry and vile. A resinous stain he chews everyday, blackening his teeth until they rot. 

But he's a coward. A fool. The taste of you is sweet enough to drown out the bitterness on his tongue, and maybe he's using your kindness a bit too much—no. No. Not maybe. Certainly. Definitely. He's using the cloying taste of you as a buffer to everything weeping from the cesspit inside of his chest. 

Then: "oh."

It's almost prophetic in a way. Cyclical in its heartache. 

He wants to apologise, but he isn't sure where to start. How does he say sorry for something of this magnitude? 

He doesn't. He can't.

John lets it necrotise instead. 

"Well," you say after a moment of silence. "When are you—?"

You don't finish. Can't, maybe, and he doesn't begrudge you the inability to utter that succinct finality. Not when he doesn't think he could, either. 

So, he says, "soon."

But you ask: "how soon?"

And he's reminded, quite vividly, of packing his things in the back of his nineteen ninety-five forest green Tata Estate when he was just shy of eighteen. His dad fuming on the porch. 

You're nothing without me, he'd spat. 

He was right, of course. Despite everything he tried, the only place that ever gave him a chance was the military solely for the thinly concealed awe that leaked in whenever he uttered his last name. 

But there was freedom in leaving. In skirting around the army for a place in the Royal British Navy—separate from the shadow of his father, his grandfather, but still riding on their coattails. John quickly found sanctuary at sea. At the unignorable distance put between himself and all the terrible memories in Hereford. 

In the middle of the ocean, that bastard's shadow couldn't reach him. 

And now—

Nothing does. 

How soon, you ask, but the real question should be: how dare you. 

"Mm, a day, maybe—if the weather holds." 

And it will. He's checked the forecast meticulously. Radioed in and asked about that pesky hurricane that seemed to fizzle out without much fanfare afterall. All the answers he got were the same. Perfect window, they say, is between dawn and mid-morning. There's gonna be some heavy winds on the coast, but if you set sail early enough, you'll miss it entirely. 

"Ah," you murmur, and there's just the faintest echo of your realisation at uncovering yet another one of his half-truths. You know he'll be gone the moment he drops you off on the harbour. "Okay."

John doesn't mean to put all of this on you so quickly. Everything just spiralled, spun, until it was a big, tangled mess beneath his feet. Time a mere whisper in the wind. His absence is a glaring black hole that you can't avoid. 

It's all pithy excuses that do little to assuage the weight of everything he'd done, but you take it right on the chin like he knew you would. A sharp nod. The barest hint of a frown. 

That is the only thing you can do, isn't it? Swallow it whole and try not to choke on it because no promises have ever been uttered between him or you. Nothing to substantiate this growing, cancerous lump of emotions that feel too fast and too slow, and too—

Dangerous. Perfect.

In his silence, a crater forms again, and he's reminded how much he prefers the sea to people; gyres to love. The brittle embrace of his cabin to the warm arms of a lover. 

He was made for the ocean. Meant to sink into algae blooms, and discover reefs untouched. To battle waves bigger, more meaningful than himself, and find sustenance on crated bartletts and scored tuna. 

But—

But. 

His hands curl around your waist, pulling you back into the broad expanse of his sun warmed chest. The heat of him liquifies your spine, and you melt, readily, into him with what might be a sigh. 

It's all so quick, isn't it? And yet, he can think of nothing else except the almost perfect torture of waking up beside you each morning. Of suffusing his atoms to yours. 

"Come with me," he murmurs into your hairline, breathing in the scent of you. Loam. Pine resin. Soft and earthy. And that's what you are, aren't you? Made for the land. The earth. Gaia. Terra. Can he really take you from this place and expect you to live like him on the sea? 

You don't answer. He feels the disappointment like a searing knife to his gut, but he understands. Gets it. This isn't the sort of proposal a sane person would make to someone they've known for only a few, short months. 

He wonders if you think he's only saying it to get into your pants. He probably isn't the first—and definitely wouldn't be the last—to make a litany of false promises just to taste you on his tongue, but he means it. Means it with every fibre of his body. Captain is roomy. Has always been too big for one person—too lonely. But it's a heavy question. A big ask. One that he selfishly presses into your hands as he litters your neck with kisses sharpened with the edge of his teeth. Leaving his mark on your skin. A semi-permanent stain only he knows is there. 

It's easy to pretend this won't be the last time when he lays you out on the sheets, fingers digging into your skin as if he was trying to crawl inside of you—and maybe he is. Maybe he wants to. Maybe he could stay suffused to your ribcage for the rest of his life, waking up and falling asleep to the sound of your beating heart, and die a happy man. For once in his life, something that belongs to him that isn't shadowed by ghosts or regret. 

(Something he will never, could never, deserve.)

There's something heart achingly desperate about the way he clings to you. Folds himself over you, murmuring promises and pleas into the bruised skin of your neck. Soft murmurations easily swallowed by the sounds you make as he ruts into you at a maddening pace. All clumsy and unrefined because he refuses to let go of you. Refuses to unglue his skin from yours, his teeth from your neck. 

He's never had it like this—drenched in sweat, pinned in place over top of you like a weighted blanket; sloppy, messy—but he feels the curl of addiction setting in when he feels the hiccups you make when he pushes in just so. When your flesh dents under the tips of his fingers, and he feels your bones in his grip. Each moan, every tremble and quiver somehow magnified in the small cabin that's much too big for one person. 

John wants to take you to this reef he stumbled onto off the Azores. Wants to walk on the sandy atoll, and fuck you under the stars. The first—and only—people on earth to feel the white sand under their skin, to whisper into the inky black of night. 

You'd like it there, he thinks. This lonely, isolated patch of land just barely rising out above the ocean. Filled to the brim with tropical fish, and hammerheads. Sea turtles. Orcas chasing seals in the distance. 

He presses his lips to your hairline, and breathes life into this little picture of you on the shore, whispering promises wrapped in desperation, devotion, into your skin. 

"John," you gasp, and he's not sure if it's a reprimand—please, please, please shut up, stop talking about that because you know I can't, I can't—or a plea—take me, bring me there, please—but he doesn't stop. Can't. He's too invested in this picturesque fantasy, the same one he dreamed about when he fucked his fist to the thought of you. "John, please—"

His veins are filled with blood-red wine. A sudden potent cocktail that makes him dizzy. Drunk on the wisps of ethanol that burrow deeper into his body until it floods his atrium. 

John wants to lean into it. Relish in the white-hot heat of it all. Wants to drag you down into the sand, into the unending sea, and stay there forever, just at the cusp of where land meets water. Your own kingdom in the domain of Poseidon. Children of Phorcys. Pontus. 

You grip him tight, and he thinks like this he could pretend it's not the last time. That when your body shudders beneath him, it's not out of sorrow or finality. 

"John," you say, but he can't bear it. He kisses you instead. Drows in the taste of you until his head spins. Spins, spins—

He wakes up in a tangle of limbs. Your arm strewn across his broad chest, anchoring him to the bed below. Your head nestled in the crux of his armpit, nose pressed tight to the swell of his ribcage. Mouth open, he notes, drooling into wry curls that blanket his torso in swaths of dark umber. 

With you very much cocooned to his side, thigh trapping his pelvis down, he feels the sharp sting of claustrophobia raking talons over the bone encasing his eyes. He's buried under you—your body the soft swell of tumulus—and for a moment he nearly forgets himself. Nearly bolts from the bed, your arms. The room. Running, running—it reminds him too much of being a captive. Tied down. Restrained. Unable to move of his own free will—

But you mumble something in your sleep, the words lost to the blood rushing in his ears, and he finds the pieces of himself he'd lost. Lulled, almost to the point of complacency, by your breaths ghosting across the thick, coarse hair on his chest. Rhythmic. Calming. 

He leans into it. Buries himself deeper. 

You smell of sweat, sex. Fennel. He burrows his nose into your crown, breathes in the scent of you until his lungs burn. He wants them to scar over with just the thick scent of you. To leave a mark so deep, so permanent, that each time he inhales, all he can taste in the back of his throat is the lingering residuum of you. 

There's this earthiness to you that feels like digging his feet into sand, and he wants to slink deeper into the embrace, into you, but there's a lingering forethought in his head that he ought to get up. That this moment of brief comfort will come at a cost, with its teeth bared and wrapped around his bones, and it's a price he can't afford to pay. 

There's an almost cognitive dissonance between what his body wants, and what he needs to do. 

It takes most of his willpower to divorce himself from your clutch, but he does. Slowly. Reluctantly. With his fingers leadened with torpor. 

Regret is the feeling of cold wood under his feet. His arms relieved from the weight of you. Fix it, something inside his chest screams, but he can't. Can't. 

He doesn't look back when he leaves the small bedroom that smells of you. Not that it matters. 

In the separation, he finds he cut a little too much off from himself, leaving more of himself with you than he intended. 

John doesn't expect much. Hasn't, really, since he set sail with his compass pointed away from home, and threw each sorrowful piece of himself into the reefs he encountered along the way. 

It's the same when he gathers everything together in the morning, running through a mental checklist of what needs to be done before he sets off into the mid-Atlantic, hopeful to reach Bermuda within four, maybe five days. From there, it would be nearly fifteen days before he reached the Azores, some nine thousand and twenty nautical miles between the destinations. 

He expects the winds this time of year to be between zero to twenty three knots. Waves, at most, around four to nine metres. He can keep up with it all, he's sure, but he's feeling less inclined to make the trip solo, and thinks, as he trawls back to shore with you sleeping in the cabin still, if he might pick up a small crew in Carolina before setting off. Or maybe he'll take solitude until he heads into the Azores. He isn't sure. The only thing he is certain of is that, for the first time in years, he doesn't want to be alone at sea. 

An oddity, of course. John always wants to be alone. 

(Until you—)

The notion is tucked away into the space inside his head where all the things he doesn't want to think about go to moulder. To rot. The idea that he's more gangrenous parts than man sits idly behind his teeth, a fleeting whim, but that, too, is shoved aside. Buried. 

—like the weight of you on him. His own personal grave, a tumulus—

Another limb severed at artery. Left to bleed. To rot. He considers leaving it out, making it hurt. Salt to the wound he has no intention of healing. 

He cauterises it instead, and uses the flame to spark up his last cigar for the occasion. 

(There's nothing worth celebrating, but he thinks he's due a belated birthday gift to himself.)

The brackish waters in the inlet are muddied with loess, and he considers taking the longer arc into the harbour to avoid the sudden swelling of waves lapping at the sides of his vessel. Pure pride, of course. He's not a captain of a dirty ship—an oxymoron at best and a idling thought that takes the shape of stalling for time—but he trudges forward in spite of the twitch in his knuckles, the urge to notch his wheel just everso slightly to the right. 

It passes, and Newfoundland curves out of the waters in a splotch of green against dour grey. Another overcast morning. The inlet, he'd heard on the radio, is dense with fog trickling down from the rolling hills in the background of this rugged landscape. 

Fog on the ocean isn't rare. With a simple flip of a switch, he changes his visualisation from naked sight to sonar, and leans back on the balls of his feet, blinking restlessly into the thick plumes of smokey-white. 

The cabin door rattles when you open it—the only indicator that you're awake—and the sound sits heavy across his shoulders. A noise he thinks he could get used to hearing. 

"Give'er a shake," he calls, voice ashen, thick from sleep. He hasn't spoken a word since he radioed in to let them know he was moving down the channel. That was nearly two hours ago. 

You appear in his periphery, wrapped up in a shawl he keeps at the end of the bed. One he thinks he picked up when he was working on a shipping vessel in Pacific, just after he'd split from the navy, and was docked for a week in Taiwan because of bad weather. 

It looks good on you. The colours accentuate your features in a way that makes it difficult to focus on the black screen of the sonar, but you make it easier for him when you pad closer to where he stands, yawning around a good morning as you fic yourself to his side, reaching for him. 

You curl against him as he steers into the estuary, one arm tucked around the small of his back, and the other above his groin in a sideways hug. A small shiver wracks through your frame when the chill from the frigid waters sneaks in through the open companionway of the helm, and you burrow deeper into his side, nose nuzzling against his bicep to keep warm. The weight of you is comforting. Steady. 

It's a clumsy dance to free his arm, but he does it somehow without dislodging you in the process, and lifts his arm, steering with one hand through the maw of the Labrador Strait, before he quickly loops it around your neck, keeping you tight to his side. You fall into him in a hurry—maybe from desperation to keep the bitter cold at bay or for some strained, final moments of closeness before he leaves the docks, and you. 

The silence is heavy. A potent cocktail of shaky uncertainty admixing with all the regret he feels for not acting on his impulsive feelings sooner. It sits low, thick, in his guts, and vacillates between mocking him for what could have been weeks of satiating himself on the fill of you, and taunting him for starting this in the first place. 

Especially when he knew exactly how it was always meant to end. 

And in a rather vicious moment of cruelty, that particular ending bobs up from the brackish waters with its stark brown oak pillars cutting through the dense fog. He doesn't need sonar to see the pier in the distance. Three clicks to the west. 

His throat pinches tight at the sight of it—rather irritatingly unassuming in its lacklustre beginnings, but a garish knife to chest all the same. It constricts. He tries to swallow but can't get the weight around his neck to receed. 

He takes his hand off the wheel, scratching at the raw skin along the column of his neck. 

His jostling seems to wake you from your sleepy stare out the window. You clear your throat. He tenses. Guts wringings themselves into a frenzied coil. Don't, he wants to say. Don't speak. Don't say anything—

"Listen, Price," you start clumsily, cautiously. And despite knowing where this is going—some apology for why you can't go with him, for why you're saying no—he makes a noise to dissuade you from continuing. He gets it. He does. It's a big ask to have someone give up several months of their life to traverse the open ocean with a stranger. 

"I know. S'alright, love. I'll—" the words are bitten through when he realises where they're headed. The offer to call. Or write. Things he knows he won't ever get around to doing, but the loose attempt to placate is better than hearing whatever you might say. A selfish need to keep the silence. 

"No, listen," you stress with a huff. He hears the eye roll in your tone, and fights back a scoff at the image. "You're stubborn, you know?"

It's nothing he's never heard before but it still makes him laugh—some broken, ugly thing in the base of his throat. Clawing up his oesophagus. 

After a moment of silence, you nuzzle your cheek against his peck, pressing a soft kiss to the edge of his heart. 

"I'm not a sailor, and this is probably the craziest thing I've ever done in my whole life, but—" his heart leaps, banging against the cage of his ribs, still scarred with your name. 

"—love—"

"—I don't want to just write you. Or—or wait for a phone call. I don't want to—" 

He hears the click in your throat when you swallow. Feels the herringbone floor open up beneath his feet, plunging his aching heart into the empty maw of his stomach. Still. Through the blooming sense of hope tangling vines around his falling heart, he reaches for the water bottle on the console, wordlessly passing it to you to drink. 

You sniff, and it's an ugly, wet noise that sends a shudder through his being. A sound he could hear, happily, for the rest of his life. 

(Sappy, tragic fool—)

"How long do I have to pack?"

If he'd been a lesser man—or maybe a better one; a good one—he would have crumbled. But he's too grizzled to take his eyes off the shoreline, and maybe—just maybe—too fucking scared to. He doesn't want to look down and find this whole thing has been some horrific joke. Doesn't want to see the derision in your eyes as you ask him why you'd ever pick him, a stranger, over the sanctuary of land. Your home, even. 

But he doesn't doubt you. 

It's an odd juxtaposition, John finds, but he's always been the sort to work in strings of abstract hypocrisy, hadn't he? Implicit trust in the men around him, but not enough to ever let go of the urge so just do everything on his own. To shoulder the burdens a man like him was seemingly built to carry. 

(And made to crack under the weight of them; a thousand fissures that were small enough to go unnoticed—until Gaz grabbed him by the lapels, shoving him against an iron door just to keep him from throwing an innocent man to his death for no other reason than his notched sense of safety—but big enough to leak a caustic ugliness into the word that threatened make the men around him bonesick.)

But he isn't thinking about that right now. Or, rather, he shouldn't be—

Because he believes you. He just believes in himself less. 

So, he has to ask. Has to. "Are you sure? Hard to change your mind when you're in the middle of the bloody ocean, love." 

The exasperated huff let out into his bicep seems to be the only answer he'll get from you on that particular topic, but it's not enough. Despite the miffed squeeze you give when he pulls his arm back, resting his hand against your cheek to pull your face back far enough to peer into your eyes, you go along with his demands, soft as they are. Maybe the way his thumb brushes along the curve of your cheekbone quells the stubbornness that brims at having your choice picked apart until it was nothing but bones. All just to satisfy his own internal dilemma. 

Or a mockery of one, anyway. 

"You gotta be sure," he says, and winces when it comes out rougher than he intended. "This is a big leap. It isn't go to fuckin' Tesco's on a Sunday—"

"First of all," you mumble, eyes narrowing up at him. "We don't even have Tesco's in Canada so that comparison is useless to me. Second of all—" and suddenly, all of that bravado falters. Shakes. You glance away from him—in askance, maybe, at your stutter, at his inability to take something someone tells him at face value. 

"Love—"

There's a fire in your eyes when you turn back to him. A defiant tilt to your chin when it lifts. Sure, and firm, and a little bit proud—drenched in the same shade of stubbornness as himself—and the sight is an electrical shock to his system. A jolt to his chest. One that hangs, heavy, around the nape of his neck, the drape of his shoulders. 

"I'm sure," is all you say. 

And it's enough. Inexplicably, overwhelmingly—enough. 

"Now, how long until we set off? I just need to get some stuff in order before we leave, but I can hurry it as much as—"

It goes against every rule in the book to take his eyes off the horizon and his hands off the wheel, especially this close to shore, but he needs—he needs to touch you. To know. To feel the commitment under your skin like an electric hum. 

"However long you need, love, fuck—" his lips are on yours, stifling the rest of what he meant to say in the taste of you. "Whatever you want, whatever you need—" he makes promises he might not be able to keep, but he thinks if he could, he'd steal the stars and the moon, and let you wear them like pretty gems. 

It'll never come to fruition because all he can really give you is a boat and a broken man who is only good at sailing the seas to escape everything that might get too close. None of it seems to matter. Not to you. Never to you. Every wall he's thrown up has been meticulously chipped down, and this, he finds, is no different. 

You lean into him, heedless of the war in his mind, and breathe in deep. Inhaling the scent of stale tobacco, sex, and sour sweat. There's something facetious about the way you hum into the kiss, nails scratching along his crown, as if you're not committing nearly a year of your life to a man you watched crumble at the altar of your feet just for a sip of you. 

"I've always wanted to go to Spain."

He groans a little into the kiss. Can't help the noises that spill out when you start mapping whimsical plans into something concrete. Something tangible. 

(Permanent, if you'll let him.)

"We'll go. Spain, Portugal, Liverpool, Italy, Cuba, Jamaica, Fiji—" he names each place between a searing kiss and keeps one eye open, listed toward the horizon. He says it all in a hush, caught on the tendrils of desperation. Urgency. There's a quiver in his voice. Blood in his throat. "I'll take you anywhere you want to go. Just name it, love."

And you just smile like you know he will. That those words, caked in some amalgamation of earnestness and madness, are a promise. An oath. 

"Anywhere," he swears again, brassbound in certainty, tangled in seagrass. 

Your name scars the brackets of his breastbone. Notched into marrow. He feels it heavy in his ribs when he pulls you closer, wanting nothing more than to sink into you until your veins are filled with him. 

Anywhere, he thinks, hushed in its reverence as the levee keeping everything he let rot cracks in your hands. Always. 

YOU—

There's a certain dreariness that comes from living by the ocean, one that's often difficult to put into words or explain to someone who hasn't spent their entire youth being told, never turn your back on it. Never trust it. 

(It, of course, because somewhere along the line, the sea stops being a place, a thing, an artefact, and becomes an entity all on its own. A living, breathing manifestation with its primordial history, its own mythology, all so distinct from anything someone on land could ever dream up.)

Because despite what you might wish, the sea will never be your friend. It's incapable of distinguishing the difference between affection and malice, and shows its love by dragging you to the darkest depths imaginable until your lungs fill with its briny breath and your drops to the floor, a human-sized whalefall. 

The ocean loves you in the worst way. 

It wants to make a tomb of you. A graveyard of algae covered bones. Bloated and unrecognisable. Picked apart until nothing remains but the ghost of you treading its pool. 

In spite of this, the ocean doesn't scare you as much as it should. It's a constant in your life. Permanent. Careless guard your iron shackles. 

(And maybe it's a little bit deeper than that because you never really understood the difference between obsession, devotion, and fear when they all make you feel the same.)

And being so far out from the rest of the people who live along the very same coast—well. That, too, is hard to simplify. 

Life by an unpopular harbour isn't as busy as someone might assume. With its deadened boardwalks, gimmicky shops, and lack of personality to draw a crowd or any would-be tourists, it stagnantes. The place begins to look like a tchotchke. A painting on a faded, sunbleached postcard rather than a cohesive ecosystem. The cogs are rusted and broken, and the delineation between them and the people begins to blur. 

And maybe that's because time feels slower in this liminal space perched between the sea and the swell of a bucolic dreamland, as if it's drenched in molasses. Bound with a ball and chain. Boring simplicity, perhaps. 

Sloughing along is the most apt descriptor you think of to describe how your tarry-thick time is spent. 

Work life balance loses its meaning when you feel the same at home as you do behind a counter. Listless. Lacklustre. It's hard to find inspiration when you've been to every nook and cranny in the valley. When all secrets have been exposed thrice over, and gossip is as stale as the bread Lucy always brings to the potluck each year.

It's fine, of course. 

Work. Home. Work. Sometimes, you'll drive down to Halifax. Maybe stop at Shoppers Drug Mart and squint at the overpriced brands on the too-white walls. But something brand name at Marshalls for more than you can afford to placate that gnawing sense of unease that comes with realising your life can be summed up in three paragraphs or less. 

Age does that, you find. Because when you're stuck in a place that never changes, when the ghost of your childhood runs along the same trails you take as an adult and feels more bitter than nostalgic, growing older starts to feel like a taunt. A jeer. 

Burdened by the encompassing emptiness of time. 

Somewhere along the line—or maybe from the very beginning—you start to stagnante, too. The overwhelming, unignorable feeling of growth weighing you down forms; barnacles clinging to your skin, softening your flesh as they burrow deep, deep, until striking bone. 

You're fine, you think.

Until him. 

Until a man shows up, hiding kindness behind a surly disposition, and offers you nothing but gruff company. Terrible jokes. Cloying sweetness drenched in nicotine and dusted in ash. 

John Price makes you consider your love of the ocean in a new, tangible way. 

There have been others, of course. People before John who have offered to pull you away from this anaemic corner of the world, making promises of taking you somewhere else. Or ones who offered to stay. To join you in this dreary town. An accumulation of hydrozoan floating aimlessly down this solitary stretch of ocean. 

They've all come and gone, and your answer has remained unchanged. Fixed. No. And if you're being kind—no, thank you. 

Because, really—

When you can't tell the difference between fear and devotion, how are you supposed to know if the ocean fills you with reverence or dread?

So, you stay.  

This place might be drenched in tar, forgotten by the masses in favour of the bigger, prettier cities that share the same oceanic view, but it's home. And your roots run deep (but your shackles are even deeper). 

It's odd, too, isn't it? That home feels less like a sanctuary and more like an obligation. A pact you have to keep. So, you do. And maybe you resent this place a little bit each year, but it's easy to forget all about that when John fits inside the spaces of your ribs that you didn't know were empty to begin with. 

It's good. Good—

—but this is better:

You wake up to the sound of the naked ocean, unencumbered by the shore. It's quieter than you expected it to be, but you suppose without land to get in its way, there's little reason to roar. 

The change in noise—and sometimes, the absolute absence of any at all—is the biggest shift you have to adjust to, but four days into your journey traversing the untamable Atlantic, the sea teaches you things you didn't know about yourself. That maybe there's a certain sort of madness that comes from being so far away from anything remotely resembling land. And a lethargy that's hard to tie down into something concrete. An abstract sense of disillusion, maybe. Bone-deep torpor. 

Something, too, that feels a bit like an atavistic fear of the yawning abyss that never seems to end. It's one thing to stand on land, solid ground, and admire it from afar, or to hug the coast on a cruise ship. Seeing it like this, in all its pelagic glory, is somehow sickening in its terrifying splendour and incredible enough to snake existential dread along the curve of your fragile insides. 

There's awe, as well, but in more muted shades of tyrrhenian. 

Still. You take to the barren sea like a once captive orca who forgot what freedom tastes like beneath its curled dorsal fin. It's exhilarating. And in equal measures, a true shove against your mettle. Your resolve. There's no help so far out to sea. No one to depend on but yourself and this enigmatic man who brushes his lips across your forehead when he thinks you're asleep, and then snarls at the ocean in the morning about not having any cigars as if he knows nothing at all about tenderness. 

It's a comfort you cling to. Embrace until your fingers ache. 

John mutters something under his breath about needing sleep. Whisky. A cigar. A good fuck in a better goddamn bed—and in no particular order, he gripes when you poke his back with your index finger. 

"Thank fuck," he rasps around a cigarette—a shitty fuckin' imitation—and pinches your side when he draws you close. Payback for the jab but it just makes you giggle. "Bermuda is only nine hours away."

"Nine hours," you breathe, surprised. Nine hours. It feels inconsequential. Brief. And maybe that's because time feels different out here. Inconsequential outside of where the sun sat. The only thing that matters about it is its position, and your internal clock begins to shift, turning into a sundial. To hear a length of time outside of morning, midday, noon, afternoon, evening, and night is strange. 

John's gaze flickers over to you hiding something that feels a bit like an appraisal as those burning sapphires run over the length of your expression, catching every twitch. 

His chest rumbles under your hand after a moment. "Excited for land, then?" 

Land. You consider it—his question, and, of course, the weight of it. The way it feels. Tastes. 

It's only been a sliver into your journey, barely anything at all in comparison to the kilometres left to go, but the sea feels as comforting as it does terrifying. The darker patches of blue signifying a depth so unfathomable that you feel breathless thinking about it. About the unquantifiable pressure, some metric tonnes of atmosphere pressing down on those pretty pools of navy. 

In comparison, Captain feels fragile. Delicate. Brittle bones of wood and plastic and foam contending with the vastitude of the sea that sprawls out in every direction. On a map right now, you'd be invisible. The tip of a pen would be too wide to accurately pinpoint your exact location. That massive gap, bigger than the whole of your country, sometimes gives you nightmares. And some nights, the boat lists as it bobs with the rolling waves that never end, dipping down much too low for your mind to ever feel comfortable with. 

The terror is almost equally as present as the awe. Both one-in-the same, almost. And it reminds you of your love for the sea. Where the lines between fear and devotion blur. It doesn't surprise you, then, that some mornings you wake up with something that curls around your head, and feels like divine euphoria, and others—

You can't stop thinking about every shipwreck movie you'd ever seen, especially when you know you'd passed over the same channel the Titanic sank in, that your bare feet stood right over top of a graveyard at a depth that hurts your head a little bit to even think about. 

But—

Land. 

John said you'd be missing it in due time the first hour into your trip, when you were still buzzing with the adrenaline of cacoëthes and watched the shoreline get swallowed whole by blue. 

In fact, he'd expected it. Seemed to keep himself at a measurable distance, as if waiting for you to turn to him and command that he bring you back home. 

A silly thought, in hindsight. 

You're shackled to the sea just as much as you are to him—maybe with a bit more willingness added in. The sea feels like home in spite of the endless dreams of capsizing in the frigid waters. 

And really. 

You can't imagine being anywhere else but here. With him. 

"I'm excited to see Bermuda," you confess, nuzzling your cheek into the warm Sherpa of his jacket. "But more so because I've never been anywhere outside of my own Country. But I like this better. I like being on Captain with you. It's—"

There's a weight in your chest. One that's almost equally composited into the ashen blue of his eyes when they flicker to you, clinging to each word. Each sentiment that spills from your sun chapped lips. 

"It's home, y'know?"

John goes quiet for a moment. Far quieter than you ever expected a man like him to be capable of—someone who got road rage out in the middle of an empty sea, and screamed himself hoarse whenever he had to talk to the absolute fuckin' muppets of the coast guard or passing ships your eyes weren't good enough to see through Fata Morgana—and it almost humbles you in a strange way. Makes you consider the stunning realisation that you've only chipped the surface of his rough, wonderful, insufferable man. In that, a keen sense of wonder brims, bringing with it an insatiable curiosity. You want to strip him down to nothing but bones, and crack them open like the claws of Snow Crab, sipping from the nectar that is his marrow. His essence. You want to map him out in greater depths than you ever dream of doing to the sea. 

His fingers spasm on your hip in a strange clench and release rhythm that makes you wonder if he's holding himself back for some reason you can't ascertain, but eventually, he breaks. His hand tightens, and pulls you closer to him. You feel his nose press against your hairline. Hear the sharp inhale as he breathes you in until his chest expands under your hand. Wide and broad, and filled with the scent of you. 

"Yeah," he rasps, humid breath fluttering across your skin. "It is. For however long you want it—"

"Forever." You catch smouldering blue just before it's eclipsed by endless black. "If you'll let me."

"Fuckin'—Christ—" 

With his words mangled in his throat, they sound more like an animalistic snarl than anything that resembles something human. The force of it seems to rattle through your flesh, dredging against bone like an anchor on the muddy sea floor until it catches. 

"Forever it is, then." It's a promise. An oath. And maybe a little bit of a threat, too, in the way only John can make something so romantic sound so gruff, and when he speaks again, you smell cinder and taste the ash in the back of his throat. Sealed in charcoal and salt. 

"I guess you're stuck with me, then," you tease, smiling when he huffs in a facsimile of exasperation, but you catch the softening in the corners of his eyes, and the low purr of happiness that rumbles out from his broad chest. 

"Can think of worse places to be."

"Like London?" You quip, echoing his words, and there's something heavy in his eyes, something that blankets around the unease that never really goes away even as you acclimate to the sensation of being landless. Adrift. It's something deeper than devotion. A black hole you could fall into.

"Yeah, exactly." He murmurs. You taste salt on his tongue when he kisses you, and wonder how you could ever dream of being anywhere else that wasn't with him.

Home, you find, is where his heart beats next to yours.

[inkwolvesandcoffee]

First Times (Poly Relationship w/ John & Ghost Headcanons)

I spent the morning exploring Hackney, which is rich in breweries. While wandering about, I got to thinking, what if…

John starts working at a brewery when he retires from the army?

OR!

He starts a micro brewery/pub with Simon, who retires around the same time.

🍺 The two men set to work immediately to acquire the proper licenses and a premise. Fortunately for the both of them, they’re quite handy and so know how to create a lovely, albeit very manly, space without too much interference from contractors. After all, why hire others for work you can do yourself?

🍺 Honestly, the business is a dream come true for John. Owning a micro brewery was his Plan B should things not work out with the army. However, it’s because of his former employment, he’s become a better business owner. It’s through the development of his leadership and risk-assessment skills he managed to secure the rank of captain.

🍺 For Simon, the brewery is an unexpected ambition, a new dream to follow. While he lets John do most of the marketing (because Simon can’t be arsed with social media… being social in general), he’s mostly pre-occupied with the creation of new and improvement of the already existing craft beers.

🍺 The business steadily grows as word gets about town. Soon, it’s not only the local Hackney residents who pop by, but also people from other boroughs.

🍺 Including you.

🍺 Come from Inner London, the people of the area find you somewhat of a posh puppy, a bit of a toff. It’s this view of you which makes them wonder what on Earth you’re doing in East London, this artsy and not as affluent part of the city.

🍺 Nevertheless, you’re a sight for sore eyes if you ask Simon, who’s your old neighbour back from the few years you lived in Manchester after moving there with your parents.

🍺 Though gruff and distant in the beginning, Simon gradually warmed up to you. Despite never opening up emotionally, you two did develop a strong amiable bond. Maybe because you were the only one to greet him on the street, to ask about his career after catching a glimpse of the dog tag around his neck, to welcome him back each time he was deployed.

🍺 To show sincere interest in him.

🍺 Your parents weren’t a fan of you socializing with the giant in the skull balaclava, but they never told you off for it since you two always seemed to have a good time. Moreover, they rarely saw you smile unless you were with him. So they let it slide, prioritizing your happiness over their prejudice.

🍺 It was only in the spring before you moved without telling him where to and he was deployed yet again, Simon realized he had feelings for you. Nonetheless, he put them aside or, rather, suppressed them until they numbed. He had nothing to offer, fifteen years your elder and terribly haunted.

🍺 So imagine his surprise and absolute delight when you stand in front of him, prettier than he can remember. “Been a while, hasn’t it?”

🍺 “Y/N,” it’s the only thing he can say, finally out loud after years of uttering it in silence.

🍺 “Who’s this fair lady?” John slides up next to Simon, arms crossed as he takes you in. His sea blue eyes darken when they meet yours. “How can we help, miss?”

🍺 The way he practically purrs the words sends a pleasant shiver down your spine. Yet, you conceal the effect he has on you behind a steady voice. “I saw the notice on the window, about the open position. Has it been filled in the meanwhile or can I still apply?”

🍺 “She’s a good one, John. Hardworking, trustworthy, kind. Fast learner too,” Simon says pensively.

🍺 “Got experience in the field?” John asks.

🍺 “Studied psychology, during which I mostly focused on the effect of marketing on the human psyche. Also run a food blog and Instagram”

🍺 “Thank Simon properly before you leave. I trust his judgment and seeing he knows you best, I’ll take his word for it.” He slaps his business partner on the shoulder. “Drop by tomorrow and we’ll discuss your contract. I’m looking forward to working with you…”

🍺 “Y/N.”

🍺 “Y/N...” John repeats thoughtfully. Then he hums and heads off.

🍺 Thus begins a series of firsts and connections as you settle down in Hackney.

🍺 Over the course of a few weeks, the locals come to see you as one of their own as you show them you simply aren’t some girl with rich parents, a spoiled princess, but a young woman trying to make a life for herself with her own hard-earned money via helping at the counter and striking up conversations.

🍺 John and you grow closer too. He admires and respects your eye for detail and aesthetics, though sometimes he feels a little awkward when you’re trying to direct him for the occasional TikTok. Nevertheless, it’s your creativity that keeps drawing him in, igniting the need to keep getting closer to you. What also helps is you bringing him coffee or reminding him to take breaks (both with a kiss on the cheek later down the line).

🍺 Loves to review the content you create together, especially when you’re in his lap while doing so.

🍺 On your mutual days off, John drags you all over London to visit bakeries and cafés. Never had you thought him a foodie, though it’s a pleasant discovery since there’s always something new to experience on the food scene. Moreover, he loves helping you out with your own blog, not just the one you created for the brewery.

🍺 These days, you’re teaching him photography and are taking baking classes together. Although, you might as well go on your own to the latter because he’s a terrible baker (unlike Simon, who’s self-taught and surprisingly good, like, sale-appropriate why-doesn’t-he-have-at-least-a-micro-bakery good).

🍺 Your bond with Simon mostly rekindles via being his guinea pig. He knows how brutally honest you can be in your feedback, which he thoroughly appreciates. Outside work, the two of you frequent bookshops, have picnics in the major parks in London, and visit the city’s oldest cemeteries. The latter is a bit of a morbid idea of a nice outing, but you appreciate the silence and romantic sense of decay in the air.

🍺 It isn’t long before you take up residence in the apartment the two men share, which leaves the other residents of the building wondering about your relationships to one another. Although, they can guess at the nature of it seeing the “noise” at night. As I said, lots of first including a relationship with two men older than you.

🍺 But aside from the plethora of sensual moments, there are also plenty of tender (and domestic) firsts. For example, Simon accompanies you to your first tattoo appointment. When, the next day, you’re struck by tattoo flu, he takes care of you. Of course John doesn’t force you to come to work nor Simon for that matter, who you clearly need at the moment (despite claiming otherwise). Henceforth, you’re both granted PTO until you’re back on your feet.

🍺 Speaking of the former-captain, John is your very first kiss. You and him went out for pizza (Simon preferring to stay home and read). On the way to Hackney Wick, beneath a bridge heavily decorated with graffiti and sheltering a few barges, he put his hands on your cheeks and crashed his lips into yours. He tasted of tobacco and white wine, laced with the sweetness of tomatoes and basil. That night, he made love to you.

🍺 Another first.

🍺 Simon prepared breakfast the next morning, serving food to ensure John and you wouldn’t succumb to exhaustion later in the day. Nor him, for that matter, because while he doesn’t get jealous and loves sharing you with his best friend, he sometimes wishes you wouldn’t go at it till early in the morning when the next day is an ordinary work day.

🍺 You’re there for them when either of them suffers from night terrors or combat stress. Simon is more prone to the former, whereas John is to the latter.

🍺 You accompany Simon to therapy too after he’s been diagnosed with PTSD. At first he didn’t want to go, refused it even, until he finally relented after another episode of flashbacks and coming to his senses while shaking in your arms.

🍺 Life with John and Simon isn’t always easy nor romantic.

🍺 But bloody hell, do they make it better.

[redskull199987]

Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso x male!reader general Dating Headcanons

Word count:1.1k Warnings:it's all cutesy, nsfw is marked Requested by @kaico-o

Masterlist

Johnny Lawrence:

SFW

he’s very stoic at first, at least until you get to know each other

doesn’t really matter how you met, maybe because of Cobra Kai or maybe you just ran into each other

he was interested in you and you were interested in him, so you exchanged numbers and the rest is basically history

it starts with small meetings at first, a beer here and there and as you talk and slowly get to know each other, you realize just how much you actually like him

you fell first, but he fell harder

you wanted to confess to him, but were too scared to lose the bond you built with him

so, he confessed instead. He was stuttering and fiddling with his hands all the time, it was very unlike him to be so nervous. But when you quickly leaned up and kissed him, his whole Confidence seemed to return and he kissed you back more passionately then you expected

From that day on, you spend most of your time with him hidden in closets or bathrooms kissing and making out

He likes to grab you by the waist and kiss you on the cheek. Enjoys the way you blush at him

Loves to show you off…as do you. You can’t help but brag about how you Boyfriend could kick anyones arse if he wanted to

Takes you out on fancy Dates even though he knows he can’t afford them. He just wants the best for you

When you two are alone, cuddled up together on his sofa, he lets out his gentle side. Evenings are spent with soft kisses and gentle touches

Tells you he loves you, every chance he gets

Is a bit nervous about what Robby would think

And at first Robby doesn’t really care, only as he got closer to his Dad again, he finally got to know you. And he adored you

The two of you love to prank Johnny sometimes

Johnny always acts annoyed, ut his heart warms when he sees his Partner and his Son getting along so well

NSFW

He’s definitely a Dom, his ego couldn’t have it any other way

He can be rough, when his hands wander over your body, but he’d never do something you don’t want

Loves to hear you whine and moan for him when his lips trail over your skin, your hands in his hair, pulling him in

He can’t help but utter praises over praises into your ear, when he sees you beneath him, so eager and ready for him

loves to call you all kinds of pet names, but would go absolutely crazy when he hears you praise him instead

sometimes close to losing himself, you just make him feel so good

You gotta talk him into letting you take care of him, since he always wants to make you feel good. But he’s done for it, as soon as You start touching him and whispering sweet nothings into his ear

He doesn’t really have any kinks, you’re enough for him. he doesn’t need anything else

Not so big on aftercare, but would always ask you if you need something and if you do, he’d be up in seconds, taking care of You

Likes it when you hold him close to you afterwards. Your arms around his naked body just feel like home

He’s just madly in love and he always realizes it again, when he sees your sleeping form next to him, a content smile on his face

Daniel LaRusso:

SFW

He is such a sweetheart, from the very beginning he was always nice to you. Never rude or unfriendly

You had got lost in his shop and there he was, more than eager to help you

And you had done something, that was rather unusual for you

you asked him for his number

and not even two days later, the two of you went on your first Date

He took you to a fancy Restaurant and you went on a walk afterwards

To say that he was absolutely smitten with you would be an understatement

And as he brought you home, the two of you shared a tender and loving kiss

He definitely fell first and probably also harder

It’s all been sunshine and rainbows since then

You’ve never been so comfortable with someone before as you are with him. You can talk with him about everything and anything, he’ll always listen intently, his whole focus just on you

Loves to go on long walks with you, where you just hold hands and enjoy each others presence, a soft kiss here and there

Always longs for you, even though the tiniest touch makes him blush like a teenage Boy

rather confident that his kids will like you

And he would remain right…kind of. Sam takes a liking in you rather fast, whereas Anthony kind of has a hard time getting to know You. But once he finds out that you’ve played a video game or two, he was basically always on your heel when he saw you

You two always kick Daniel’s ass in Smash Bros

NSFW

He's so incredibly soft with You. He’s a Gentleman and always asks for your consent first and would be very happy to do as You please. Anything that makes you happy

he would be more reluctant at the beginning of your relationship, but as you grow more comfortable with each other, he would be ready to try out whatever you like

He claims that he’s a switch, but you and him both know that he's a bottom. He just loves it when you take control over him. He loves it when your hands wander over his skin, making him sigh with pleasure

You always manage to coax him into stopping suppressing his moans and whines and when you brush soft and wet kisses over his neck, mumbling praises and pet names into his ear, his skin would flush and he shudders when your body moves against his

He’d be so whiny and needy when edge and tease him, he’s be begging for you, his face red in embarrassment, but you both knew that he secretly loved it

he absolutely loves it when you overstimulate him, making him cry out in pleasure

He’s a king of Aftercare. Even when he’s exhausted as hell, he makes you his top priority. You’d sometimes have to convince him to let you take care of him afterwards, cleaning him up or just holding him close, pressing loving kisses all over his face

You’d always have a soft smile on your face when he fell asleep in your arms

and if you were too loud, You’d never hear the end of it from his kids…

[avocado-writing]

thinking abouttttt reader (perhaps nightingale!!) and crowley fucking etc on a couch in the bookshop while aziraphale works nearby, trying to distract him and moaning his name begging him to join them

perhaps even leaving a perfect space for him to fit in 🤫

notes: yes teehee tltdatsib-verse. utter filth.

pairing: aziraphale x reader x crowley

rating: E, minors dni

“Time for bed, angel.”

Aziraphale looks up from his desk to the two of you. Between you and Crowley you take up most of the doorframe, a double hit of pleading eyes and soft hands. Crowley’s just wearing silk boxers, and your short pyjama set leaves very little to the imagination. Aziraphale knows what you actually mean when you tell him it’s time for bed: we’re both feeling up for it, and we want you to come and join us.

And to be fair, usually Aziraphale says yes. He might be an angel but he’s a sinner when it comes to lust, when it comes to the both of you. It’s a delight to have one person’s hands on you, but the touch of two? Two who love him to the ends of the earth and desire nothing more than to have him between them, caress him, hold him, make love to him? How does one not fall into that temptation?

Bookseller issues, that’s how. He’s had a smarmy letter from someone claiming there’s a family heirloom in his shop, donated by an ancestor years ago, and they want it back. He needs to work out how to squirm his way out of this one or the word will spread that he can be bullied into surrendering his stock. So he slides his glasses off his face and into his hair and gives you both a resigned smile. 

“I’m sorry, my darlings. I won’t be joining you tonight, for anything but sleep anyway. But don’t let my absence stop you. I’m sure you can find ways to entertain yourselves.”

He says this last part with a wink and hopes it will solve the matter, but you and Crowley exchange a look. The two of you are masters of silent communication. Aziraphale is a little jealous of it if truth be told, but usually when you do this it’s because the two of you are scheming something about him. 

“Alright,” you sigh, taking Crowley’s hand and heading to the sofa, “we won’t go to bed then.”

Aziraphale furrows his brow. 

“But—”

“No angel, you’ve made yourself quite clear,” Crowley says, raising his palm to silence his husband. He takes a seat and pats the area next to him, where you slide in perfectly. There is just enough room on the couch for Aziraphale to join you. 

“I don’t know what the two of you think you’re doing —”

“We’re just not letting your absence stop us,” Crowley explains. You sling a leg over his so you can mount his slim thigh, and then the two of you begin to kiss. There is no preamble to it. There is no warming up. Suddenly the two of you are lips-akimbo, pressing your tongues together in a way which borders on pornographic. No, scratch that, there is nothing bordering about it at all - the moan Crowley releases into your mouth, the way your back arches as he grabs a handful of your arse, this is all practically choreographed. 

For him. To make him pay attention. 

Aziraphale will not let it work. He turns back to his papers and stares down at them, but the letters turn into a jumbled mess before his eyes. A moment passes but when you groan his head whips around involuntarily.

You’re riding Crowley’s leg, pressing your sex to it and dragging it back and forth slowly. You’ve reached into his boxers, too, and pulled out the length of him: half-hard and already beginning to leak. His precome shines on your fingers. Both of you are looking directly at your angel.

“Stop it,” he says, but doesn’t mean it at all. He’d very much like for you to continue, actually. Aziraphale reaches down to adjust himself in his trousers, where his cock is beginning to grow heavy and ache.

He didn’t even realise he’d manifested one. He must have done it subconsciously. This is what the two of you do to him.

“Gosh, I wish our husband was over here,” you sigh, dramatically, swiping the moisture off Crowley’s slit, “you’re lovely, Crowley, but Aziraphale’s thighs are so lovely and thick. I could fuck them all day.”

“Normally I’d take that as an insult, nightingale, but I can’t help but agree,” Crowley murmurs. You capture his lips in another filthy kiss to show you didn’t mean to offend your demon, digging your hips down more roughly. You must catch in a pleasurable way because you let out a needy little mewl.

“Oh, Crowley–” you huff, matching the speed of your thrusts with the timing of your hand. You look wickedly back to Aziraphale.

“There’s room. You could join us. I’d love to feel your thigh under me, darling. I’m sure Crowley would too, you have two of them after all. And his pussy is just as pretty as his cock, don’t you think? Isn’t he such a lovely demon?”

You lick a line along Crowley’s throat and bite at the hinge of his jaw, teasing the skin with your teeth. The two of you let out a twin little cry, and it snaps the last thread of self control Aziraphale was hanging on to.

He stands, suddenly, and you both look delighted.

“If you’re going to terrorise me, you’ll get what you asked for,” he states. A motion of his hand has the two of you scrambling to make space. Aziraphale sits heavily between the two of you and pats either one of his thighs.

“You want to ride me? Ride me. And whoever comes first I’ll pay special attention to.”

You and Crowley exchange a look. This has gone from an allyship to a competition with one sentence. Aziraphale is overwhelmed by the feeling of the two of you suddenly mounting him, your sexes rough and needy against him. 

He slips a hand around either of your waists and holds you both close. 

Perhaps the outside world can wait.

taglist: @angiestopit @foolishprincipalitee @smile-eywa @staygoldsquatchling02 @underratedboogeyman @specter-soltare @candlewitch-cryptic @cool-ontherun-world @emilynissangtr @willbedecided @bdffkierenwalker @cool-iguana @ilyatan @civil-groupie @willyoubethepookietomypookster @lxsm2 @clarina04 @wtfhasmy-lifecometo @mrgatotortuga @wereallbrokenangels @night-affiliate @silcosmoke @kimqueenofhell @chewbrry @bajablast23 @h3k3t @am-i-obsessed---maybe @bakerstreethound@a-mediocore-writer

[aesopsharpmybeloved]

Tess' Sharpuary - 29. Reparo (*)

Aesop's overenthusiasm in indulging in some wild impromptu lovemaking with his sweetheart leads to a rather unexpected sitution.

chapter specific tags: 18+!, explicit, established relationship, attempts at humour

relationships: aesop sharp x reader

a/n: I like to think this one is quite unhinged, as I wanted to go out with something of a bang 😁

[FULL PICTURE]

29. Reparo (1k)

tw: explicit, vaginal sex, age difference (reader is an adult)

Nestled among various books and scrolls, partly hidden away by collapsed shelves, lay a couple in a rather obvious state of undress, both of them laughing uncontrollably.

In all honesty, Aesop Sharp should have picked a more suitable vertical surface to pin his young lover against, however, one sometimes simply cannot steer their passion. And in a sudden surge of desire brought to him by her seductive words, coupled with the enticing movement of her hips as well as his overall hunger which seemed to be merely lurking below the surface since the first time he was allowed to take her, he truly found himself unable to think clearly, the blood normally coursing through his brain gathering entirely elsewhere.

And so, in an ill-advised move, after ridding one another of all the not only unnecessary, but at that moment completely unwanted articles of clothing, the young woman’s warm back was pressed against the coolness of the bookcase, and their bodies surrendered to their most carnal, unbridled desires. However, what their wild coupling lacked in choosing of a good surface, it made up for completely in passion and pleasure, the scraping and thudding noises the bookcase made as Aesop’s sweetheart was mercilessly pounded into against it were music to the professor’s ears as much as her own moans of gratification.

That is, until a different noise entirely cut through their heated moment. A very nasty sounding crack. And suddenly, all hell broke loose. His lover squeaked and tightened her arms around him as she felt the bookcase give way and begin collapsing behind her. Aesop, however, was not fast enough in getting his balance as the girl’s entire weight was suddenly shifted onto him. And so, they tumbled down in a tangle of limbs, the potions master only just so managing to shift them enough so neither of them hurt themselves on their way down, his hand securely on the back of her head for good measure. 

He used his own body to shield her then, as the blasted piece of furniture pretty much broke apart and fell all around them, books hitting his back painfully on their way down, soon being spread around their panicked bodies and some even covering them, along with the wooden shelves. After a few seconds, it would seem the Great Fall of the Study Bookcase was over, and Aesop didn’t waste a single second in asking: “Merlin’s fluttery hole! Are you alright?” along with checking his young lover for any potential injury.

There was complete and utter silence for several seconds, broken only by their heavy breathing, but then…

Then the young woman began laughing, loudly and openly. A few moments later, during which the complete absurdity of the situation finally hit the professor, he gladly joined her in her laughter. His face buried in her neck, his guffaws reverberating over her skin, her hands twisting gently in his hair. 

“Oh, Merlin’s saggy left bollock,” she squeaked, giggles still wracking through her mostly bare body. “I’m so sorry,” Aesop replied, his laughter still strong, and he lifted himself on one hand to observe the damage. His sweetheart didn’t seem to be hurt, thankfully, and there were tears of laughter running down her rosy cheeks. The bookcase was left in a state of complete ruin, and one of the collapsed shelves was digging into his arse rather uncomfortably. 

This was bloody ridiculous.

“I’m sorry, fuck… This is a first for me,” he said sheepishly, not making an effort to move just yet. “Another thing you can add into your autobiography,” the girl giggled again, taking in deep breaths, prompting a curious look from him. Her eyes closed and hrt grin widened: “Aesop Sharp; Former Auror, Potions master of Hogwarts, part-time bookcase destroyer!”

Aesop rolled his eyes, and lowered his head to rest at the crook of her neck again. “Such things can happen in the throes of passion,” he defended himself lamely, shrugging his shoulders the tiniest little bit. He could feel yet another giggle bubble in her chest: “True enough. However, seeing as our throes of passion caused me to now have an edge of a book somewhere an edge of a book definitely should not be, I think we better go enjoy the throes of passion somewhere else, ideally on something that won’t collapse on us.”

He chuckled, but moved to get up, the books and shelves that covered his back and bum falling down from him in the process. His prick wilted slightly in the chaos that ensued, but despite everything, it was quite obvious he was still very much interested in continuing what they began. “My sweet,” he offered his hand to his lover, and she took it with a roll of her eyes. 

With a quick wave of his wand and a ‘Reparo’ uttered from his lips, the bookcase began repairing itself, and soon stood as it did before some idiot decided to fuck his girlfriend against it. Books floated back into their previous position soon after, and the only proof that anything had happened in the study at all outside of just that - studying - were the two of them, partly naked, slightly sweaty, hair tangled and bodies still warm and thrumming gently. 

“So… want to try the kitchen counter next? I’m almost positive that one will be fine,” Aesop offered with a cheeky grin, prompting the young woman to smack his shoulder lightly. “I think I’m actually quite happy to finish in our bed tonight. However, if you want to experiment up on the counter, be my guest. I’ll be in the bedroom when you’re done,” she replied teasingly. Aesop mock frowned, before swiftly grabbing her waist and throwing the poor girl over his shoulder. 

“Bed is an excellent idea, dear,” he said happily as he hauled her, giggling and squealing, out of his study.

---

a/n: And that's it folks! Sharpuary concluded. Thank you everyone who read and enjoyed these little snippets of mine, as well as the silly scribbles. It was very fun to participate, as well as reading and looking at what all the other Sharpies produced. I already have some more art and I'm in the middle of writing a new fic, so I'll hopefully soon have more Sharp content to share, and hopefully next year, we'll do this rodeo again 😁

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed ❤

[AO3] - [Sharpuary 2024] - [Masterlist]

[the-fiction-witch]

Britches

Media The Artful Dodger

Character Jack Dawkins

Couple Jack X Reader

Rating Flirty AF

I woke to the bright morning light, turned over a little and sat up in bed, I yawned my body ached and stiff from last night, and the busy bustle of yesterday. I pushed myself out and adjusted the bed as I climbed out. I stretched my naked body feeling the sweet stretched sensation run over me, and I rubbed my eyes begining the search for my clothes. Unfortunately, most of what I found was not wearable, it was all soaked in the blood from yesterday's surgery, in no greater terms an utter disaster. But such is the issue when we actually let the Prof try and do anything remotely complicated. My dress was covered, as was my apron, the only things not completely wrecked were my undershirt and panties. Everything else was designed for a good long soak in the laundry. 

Unfortunately, that left me in a bit of a situation. All my clothes are wrecked,

I have to get them down to the laundry at least,

I don't have any clothes up here of my own, which really is foolish I should start keeping them here, 

But what am I to do? 

Not like I can go down to the laundry in the nude. 

All though I'm sure some in the hospital would be amused by it.

I sighed and threw my clothes over the chair to deal with in a moment, and I spotted out of the corner of my eye the large wooden wardrobe at the door of the bed. 

Well, it's worth a check maybe I have left some of my clothes here at some point or another. 

I pulled open the wooden doors seeing the various shelves and clothes littering them, I searched around but found nothing of my own. 

Well there goes that Idea then, 

but as soon as that one left another arrived as I saw the various clothes littered inside, well... I do need clothes. 

I slipped on my panties and my usual boots as my undershirt was alright too I slipped that on too buttoning the blouse shirt down the buttons that reached halfway down my chest, I then buttoned the sleeves at my elbows as I never bothered them any lower they'd only be wrecked by blood and... I don't want to think about what else, and out of the wardrobe I grabbed a pair of brown britches, the fabric once had a sort of plaid pattern in a darker brown but the wash and wear had left it almost unnoticeable. 

I pulled them out and gave them a dust off from the wardrobe before I slipped them on, strangely enough rather a fight to do so, given they were not sized, designed, cut or themed for a lady. Let alone a lady such as myself! 

Mostly due to the man who wears them being... well... as thin as a lamppost, and myself as thick as hospital leek soup. 

It was a fight to get them over my sizeable arse but I managed it. 

Even if now over my ass they didn't fit my waist. I buttoned them up as tightly as I could even if the waist was now under my breast.

I don't know why I assumed it wouldn't given he's so much taller than me. And it's not like he has them particularly low on himself. 

But I have to admit...

I look kinda good. 

Something defendant about it, something rebellious, something a little naughty. 

To look at how good I looked and be constantly reminded I could never be in public like this, 

I grabbed a pair of suspenders and clipped them to the britches in hopes of keeping them up giving them a firm snap on my shoulders.

"Owww..." I complained as the snap actually hurt! 

Oh. Now I feel bad about how much I do it to him. 

"What the Bloody Hell are you doing?" 

I gulped and turned my attention to the bed, where Jack lay looking at me with a messy bedhead and an unamused look. 

"Good Morning Jack," I smiled innocently,

"I repeat. What the Bloody hell are you doing?" 

"Getting dressed."

"Into my clothes!"

"... My clothes are dirty." I did my best innocent smile, 

"So you're gonna wear mine?"

"I'm going to borrow them. Just for a while."

"You really think you're gonna go out like that?"

"I don't see why not?" 

"I can think of a few reasons," he said as he sat up and he stared at me, 

"Don't you think I look nice Jack," I smiled as I moved to stand in front of him and I did a little twirl, He stared with a sly smile. He rested his hands on my hips and slowly turned me to look at me but stopped almost as soon as I faced away from him and just kept me there, "Jack?" I asked after a while, before I felt a firm smack on my ass "Jack!" 

"Ah ah ah I'm looking." He smirked before he wrapped his arms around me tightly and began kissing the small of my back, "Take them off."

"What?"

"Take them off. Now."

"I'm only borrowing them I'll give them back once I clean my dress"

"That wasn't a question. It was an order." He growled, "You take them off or I will."

"Excuse me?" I giggled but before I could say another word he forced me down on the bed "Ahh Jack!" I giggled, 

"This isn't up for debate darling." He glared, as he loomed over me. "I have to admit, you do look good." he smirked, "But there is also something kinda weird about you wearing them... like from the waist down... it just looks like you a very attractive man and, I don't know how I feel about that." He said before he began to undo them but he was struggling,

"Jack these are yours, how are you struggling to remove them?" I giggled,

"Becuase I'm normally wearing them!" He defended, "Strangely enough darling I don't have much experience removing trousers off someone else." 

"Jack you spent ten years in the Navy you cannot convince me you never once removed another man's pants."

"what are you implying." He glared 

"I'm implying you were sucking some D-"I began but he put a hand over my mouth 

"Alright, I was gonna be nice. Not anymore." He warns forcing me down on my stomach...

[annabtg]

Can I ask why you like James? Everything he and his friends did are toxic male traits. They deserved to be expelled for how they treated Snape. All that guy wanted to do was study and spend time with the girl he loved. Snape shouldn’t have called her a mudblood but that was provoked by James. That guy had ruined Snape’s future and made him turn to the dark arts. How can you support someone like that?. Lily was in love with Snape and I’m certain James snuck a love potion to her or manipulated her into thinking Snape was evil. Snape deserved a happy ending with Lily, and he would have been a better father to Harry than James ever could have. Unfortunately, James arrogant and bullying personality rubbed off on his son. I don’t get how you people can like character like that. Snape deserved Lily because he loved her more than James ever could have.

Is this 2015 Quora?

Well, I meant to get some writing done, but there's always the afternoon, I suppose. I can never resist an opportunity to ramble about my favourite characters!

Can I ask why you like James?

Sure you can (case in point) but why do you care? Do I know you? Do you read my writing? It doesn't seem like it, because he has a central role in it, often highlighted with tags such as "James Potter is a Little Shit", so you'd have an idea already. You're probably just asking to distract me from writing more fic about him. Slightly bothersome, but ultimately beneficial to my essay-writing skills.

Everything he and his friends did are toxic male traits.

As a pharmacist, I will tell you that the dose makes the poison. Anything can be toxic if you take enough of it.

They deserved to be expelled for how they treated Snape.

They did die in the end, which I understand is not as good a punishment as being expelled, but it will have to do.

All that guy wanted to do was study and spend time with the girl he loved.

Spending time with the girl you love is only a nice and honourable thing if she also wants the same thing. If she tells you she's not interested, it's creepy and disgusting.

Snape shouldn’t have called her a mudblood but that was provoked by James.

I fail to understand how a boy who can't even begin to utter the word and is obviously smitten with a girl, can convince another boy to call that same girl a racial slur. It seems rather counterintuitive.

That guy had ruined Snape’s future and made him turn to the dark arts.

Okay listen, I know that working with teens can be a pain sometimes but overall getting a job with tenure at the most prestigious magic school of Britain at the age of 19 is hardly a ruined future. I have many friends who would turn to the dark arts for it.

How can you support someone like that?

Well, he's hot and I have a thing for arrogant smart-arses.

Lily was in love with Snape and I’m certain James snuck a love potion to her or manipulated her into thinking Snape was evil.

Wait, no, we're not on 2015 Quora. 2015 Quora would be claiming that Lily was an ungrateful bitch who treated Snape so badly even though the poor sod loved her with all his life. Because honestly, we never see her showing any kind of love towards Snape. She's always lashing out at him or trying to get something out of him. So self-centered.

Snape deserved a happy ending with Lily, and he would have been a better father to Harry than James ever could have.

As the wonderfully loving way he treated Harry in the books proves beyond doubt, I assume?

Unfortunately, James arrogant and bullying personality rubbed off on his son.

I'm going to have to play the scientist card again but I have to inform you that genes don't work quite like that.

I don’t get how you people can like character like that.

Does this post help at all?

Snape deserved Lily because he loved her more than James ever could have.

Lily was a whole person and could choose her own partner. If she would rather marry the guy who loved her less, that's on her, not on James. I suppose he must have had some qualities that compensated for his less-than-perfect love.

[theonceandfuturequeenoftarts]

Harry bounces and steps in time to a sugary pop song that seems to repeat the words "true love" every two seconds. In his peripheral vision he can see the twitch beginning to develop in Voldemort's brow, but he can't stop to laugh about that because he's going for the high score.

"I regret going out in public with you," Voldemort declares flatly.

"I can't hear you over how awesome I am~"

"You're ridiculous."

"I think someone's jealous of my moves," Harry taunts back breathlessly.

Even while focused on the screen and the deluge of arrows drifting across it, he can sense Voldemort's utter stillness. It's like he sucks the life out of the air around him.

When Harry finishes the level – high score achieved! – Voldemort says, "Step aside," in a deadly serious tone.

Welp, Harry succeeded in provoking Voldemort; now to see whether he'll eat his smacktalk or have blackmail material for the rest of his life.

Voldemort cues up the exact same song at the same difficulty level because he is a competitive arse. However, even having just heard the song and seeing Harry dance, Voldemort... well, the only real word for it is 'struggles.'

He's clearly not used to the flow of modern pop music and doesn't have Harry's innate gifts for movement and athleticism. He's also not nearly willing enough to look stupid in order to win. The result is akin to a train wreck – jerky, belated steps, flailing when he overcompensates in one direction then has to go in a different one, and a lot of creative cursing.

Voldemort holds his head high once he finishes, panting for breath, but mostly so he can avoid Harry's smug look.

"Let us never speak of this again."

"Uh-huh."

"Harry."

"Yes?"

"I will gut you if anyone finds out about this."

"Okay." He's telling everyone. He'll take out an ad in the Daily Prophet. 

[mrsarnasdelicious]

Merry Christmas You Filthy Animals - Arthur Shelby

"May I have this dance?" Arthur grins saucily at you. "Sap." You chuckle, placing one hand on his chest and the other on his shoulder. Arthur smirks and puts a hand on the small of your back and the other on your hip.

It is not even dancing, as much as just rubbing together.

Arthur's trousers are getting more and more tented by the minute. His hand slowly slips from your back to your arse. He gropes lewdly. "I am not going to be able to help myself, luf." He growls against your ear. You titter a soft giggle. "You are so greedy, Arthur." You press a kiss to his cheek. Arthur pushes you flush against him. "I can't help it. You are just so stunning like this." Arthur mumbles.

Slowly he stands still, just holding onto you. His embrace becomes so tight that you cannot escape it. You don't mind, though, burrowing into him. Arthur gropes you and you can feel the way he presses his pelvis against yours. He is hard in his slacks.

"Shall we turn off the grammophone and go to bed." You cooe. Arthur smirks against the crown of your head. "That is a good idea, love." He grunts. Slowly he lets you go. You smile, kissing his cheek and sauntering to the stairs. Arthur hurries to turn off the gramophone and follow after you.

He takes you by the hand and you lead him to the bedroom. On the way there, Arthur sheds his jacket, waistcoat, shoes and shirt. In trousers, socks and undershirt, he chases you to the bed, pushing you down, face first ass up.

"Fuck, I want you so bad." He growls. He grips your hips and rutts wildly against your upturned arse. "Hmm, oh yes please." You moan for him. "Gonna undress you, yes." Arthur grunts, rucking up your dress. "Yeah.. give me some space." You murmur. But Arthur does not back up. Instead he continues to rutt against you. "Get my zipper." You tell him. "Yes love." Arthur obliges, pulling down the zipper of your dress.

You pull your dress down, shoving it away with a few choice kicks of your foot.

Arthur sheds his undershirt and his trousers. He keeps grinding against you as good as he can, his fingers running up your back to the laces of your bra, deftly pulling them open. You let your bra slip off and Arthur reaches out to your breasts at once, his big hands groping and kneading. You moan, leaning into his touch. He rakes his fingers down your back, to the rim of your knickers. He drags them slowly down your thighs. You push back against him. "Fuck." He rasps.

He hurries to rid himself of his underpants and lines up right away. "Oooh yes, fuck fuck yes." He groans. He teases your entrance with the head of his cock. You whimper and try to shove back on him, to take him inside. A wavering moan slips from Arthur's lips. "Oh God, love." He grabs you by the hips. He thrusts into you, hilting right away. You squeal in utter pleasure.

Arthur fucks you, hard and fast, his head drooping to press between your shoulders. He grunts and groans, his fingers digging into the flesh of your hips. "F-fuck.. you feel so good." He moans, slamming into you like a man gone wild. All you can do is hold on to the sheets, moaning with every fierce thrust.

He does not manage this for long, though. His sweaty forehead rubs against your shoulder. "Gunna do it to you, love." He growls. His hips begin to stutter, his thrusts wavering. You can practically feel him pulse inside you.

"Oh yes, Arthur, give it to me!"

[cursedonyx]

Professor Fig Adopts the Emerald Trio (Part 2)

The second instalment of an AU in which Professor Fig has survived, and has adopted Sebastian, Ominis and Dracaena.

Part 1

Sixth year begins and with it comes the NEWT preparations. Fig discusses with the Trio what careers they might take, and tries to help Ominis begin to process his childhood trauma. Sebastian and Dracaena end up in possession of contraband.

Word Count – 5.7k

Warnings – Mentions of childhood abuse (Ominis) | Contraband (drugs)

The summer of 1891 was an enjoyable affair for the Emerald Trio. Dracaena, Sebastian and Ominis spent most of their days taking full advantage of the mostly empty castle, exploring every nook and cranny and delving into places they were more than certain they shouldn’t be, before retiring for the evening and having dinner with their new guardian, Professor Fig.

Dracaena took the opportunity early on in the summer to show them all, including Fig, the Room of Requirement, revelling in the praise heaped upon her by her mentor and her best friends for all she’d done with the space. It became a retreat of sorts for her and her best friends, a far warmer and more comfortable hidden spot than the Undercroft, which they visited only on rare occasions (and mostly when hiding from Peeves). Fig didn’t come into the Room all too often, telling the trio that it was their space, and he’d only enter if he needed them for something that couldn’t wait. That didn’t stop him enjoying his frequent invitations, particularly enjoying spending time with the beasts Dracaena had acquired during her adventures, and bonding with the Phoenix that she had named Miriam.

But time marched on, and summer eventually came to a close. The other students came back, and word quickly spread that the three were now cared for by none other than one of their own Professors. Some muttered irritably that they were now protected from consequences, and others tried to test the waters by teasing and attempted hexes, but they were dealt with as Sebastian, Ominis and Dracaena had always dealt with irritants. Swiftly and without mercy, which landed them all detention before the first week of term had ended.

The weekend arrived, and Dracaena lounged on one of the sofas in the Room of Requirement, her feet propped in Sebastian’s lap, occasionally tickled as he turned a page of the book he was reading. Ominis was tending to a large Flutterby bush he’d been cultivating all through the summer, and Professor Fig was seated at an elegant desk, marking homework. Deek swanned around, a smile on his face as he offered them all tea and biscuits, the light pattering of his feet accompanying the gentle music piped from a magical gramophone.

With a light sigh, Fig placed the last essay onto the pile and leaned back in his chair, running a hand over his face as Miriam the Phoenix ruffled her feathers from the perch behind him. He eyed the three Slytherins, one corner of his lips lifting and pulling out a touch. His charges. His kids. His smile broadened, and he decided to disrupt the soft peace by clearing his throat.

“I think we all need to have a little chat,” he said, fighting to make his expression stern as all three of them stilled, throwing guilty looks to each other, Ominis doing a remarkable job of it, all things considered. He let the silence hang a long moment as they turned to him, then he chuckled.

“About your future careers,” he clarified, smirking like a schoolboy as his adopted charges all uttered various sounds of relief and irritation at his little joke.

“Merlin’s arse, Elly!” Dracaena said, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. “You made me think we were in for a bollocking!”

He chuckled, warmed by the freedom with which she now spoke to him, her comfort with his presence obvious. The lads weren’t quite so informal, but that would come with time. At least they all still called him ‘Professor’ when they were around the rest of the school. He waved a hand, and the three gathered in front of his desk, conjuring their preferred chairs and settling before him.

He clasped his hands and leaned forward with a smile. “So, any thoughts on what you want to do once you’re finished with Hogwarts? I know the careers advice of last year might not have sunk in with all you endured.”

Dracaena was the first to answer, ever eager and certain of herself.

“I thought being an Auror would be good,” she said.

“Yeah, I thought about that too,” Sebastian agreed. “Or maybe a cursebreaker, or research, or something like that.”

“Marvellous ideas,” Fig said, turning to Ominis. “What about you?”

He gave an elegant shrug. “I’ve no idea.”

“Surely you must have some thoughts?” Fig pressed.

Ominis twisted the corner of his mouth. “Nope,” he replied, his hands tightening in his lap.

Sebastian and Dracaena shared a significant look at this oddly colloquial word, and Sebastian cleared his throat.

“You know, I’ve got to go grab something from the library,” he said. “Care to give me a hand, Drac?”

“Yep,” she jumped to her feet, and caught Fig’s eye, tilting her head meaningfully at Ominis with a look that said he needs your help. Ominis began to rise, but Dracaena put her hand on his shoulder, leaned down, and whispered in his ear. A flash of fear crossed his face, but his friends were already halfway out the door.

“Well…” Eleazar cleared his throat gently as the young Slytherin before him shuffled his feet, looking for all the world as if he wished he was anywhere but here. “Is… everything alright, Ominis?”

His shoulders tensed immediately.

“What have they said?” he demanded. “There’s nothing wrong with me!” Almost instantly, another flash of fear lit on his elegant features. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.”

Frowning lightly, Eleazar got to his feet, and the young Slytherin bolted out of his chair, taking several steps back. Alarmed, Eleazar followed, raising his hands.

“Ominis, it’s alright, you're not in trouble,” he said. Far from relaxing the lad, he seemed to become more agitated, his eyes darting around, as if he was seeking an escape he couldn’t see. “Come on now, come and sit with me, and we’ll have a nice cup of tea, and a chat about whatever’s bothering you, hm?”

Ominis looked terrified.

“You think he’ll be alright?” Dracaena said, following Sebastian through the castle. “I feel awful, like we were abandoning him.”

“Nah, He’ll be fine,” Sebastian said, the back of his hand occasionally bumping hers as they walked side-by-side. “Fig really helped me, more than I thought he would, and Merlin knows Ominis has some heavy shit to get off his chest.”

Dracaena sighed. “All the same, I do feel a bit guilty. He always seems so much happier when we’re with him.”

“Well, you,” Sebastian grumbled under his breath.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing.”

She chuckled, and took his arm, causing a blush to flow up the back of his neck. “So, what was that thing you needed to get?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Sebastian grinned. “I’ve been trying to get Ominis alone with Fig for ages now, and didn’t want to waste the opportunity.”

“Is that the only reason?” Dracaena teased, and the blush crept onto Sebastian’s cheeks. He glanced away.

“Fancy a walk?” he said, gesturing vaguely at the windows. “The weather’s good.”

They made their way down to the grounds and took an easy, rambling route, meandering up to the quidditch pitch to spy on the Gryffindor team’s practice for a few minutes before they were chased off by an irritable Madam Kogawa, losing ten points apiece for Slytherin. They decided it was worth it. Giggling together, they wandered off in the vague direction of Hogsmeade, before Sebastian glanced meaningfully at the Forbidden Forest.

“We've only landed the one detention so far,” he said casually. “I feel a bit strange without getting into trouble every now and then. How about it, Hoctina, you feeling brave enough to go in?”

Dracaena gave him a level look, trying not to grin at the cheeky smile on his face. “You do know I was in and out of that Forest more often than I was our common room last year, right?”

Sebastian chuckled. “Rubbish. Yeah I get that there’s a load of rumours about you, but you don’t need to make them up to impress me. We already did loads together that would scare the pants of most people.”

“So why are you doubting me?” Dracaena said, sufficiently rankled. She dropped his arm and marched over the tiny bridge, her nose in the air, Sebastian scampering along behind her. His free laughter told her he’d gotten exactly what he wanted, and she sighed, chuckling a little herself at how easily he’d played her. He’d always had such a talent for it.

“Hang on,” Sebastian said, after trekking down the path for a good ten minutes and occasionally blasting spiders out of the trees. “What’s this?”

Dracaena paused, peering at the tangle of thorns Sebastian was investigating. A battered pair of boots poked out, and she felt the familiar prickle of cold shiver up her spine, the same feeling she got whenever she saw a dead body.

“Careful,” Sebastian said, as she stepped closer. He held out a hand to stop her. “There’s a Devil’s Snare in there, probably what got the poor bugger. It’s hiding now because the sun’s up, but still, be on your guard.” He used his wand to levitate a few of the brambles out the way. “Looks like he was a courier, there’s a parcel there. Maybe we could deliver it on his behalf?”

“Good idea,” Dracaena said. “But why was he walking through the Forest if he was delivering something?”

Sebastian accioed the parcel into his hands and frowned as he turned it over, a light clinking coming from within.

“No address,” he said, and picked at the string tying the brown paper together. “I wonder what…”

The paper fell away, and Sebastian’s brows went up as several tiny bottles were revealed, all neatly packed together in a small crate. Each tiny bottle contained a swirling, white-blue substance that seemed to slide between a liquid and gaseous state.

“Bloody hell,” Sebastian said. “This isn’t good.”

“What is it?” Dracaena asked, huddling up to him as he picked out one of the tiny bottles. “Unicorn blood?”

“Nah, that’s way thicker, and the colour’s more silvery,” he said. “This is moonflower essence. It’s extremely rare, worth an absolute fortune, and very, very illegal.”

Professor Fig sat patiently on the sofa in the Room of Requirement, a leg crossed over the other, his foot tapping the air slightly as he sipped steadily at a lovely cup of tea. He was settled back against the arm, trying his hardest not to ask for the fourth time what the matter was with Ominis. The young Slytherin was sitting bolt upright on the opposite end of the sofa, clutching a cup of tea that he hadn’t touched. Half an hour had passed, and he’d not said a word aside from variations of “I’m quite alright, thank you,” despite the older man’s gentle probing.

Eleazar had his suspicions, of course. The way he’d reacted when he’d thought he’d spoken out of turn to a parental figure spoke volumes of the kind of trauma he suspected he’d endured, and he knew as well as anyone that Ominis had to talk about his past in order to be able to process what he’d gone through, to begin to heal. But he couldn’t force it, for that would only make matters worse.

So he sat, and he waited. Unfortunately, it seemed Ominis was far more accustomed to long periods of silence than Sebastian was, and he sensed that if he was going to get anywhere at all, he was going to have to prove that he could be trusted. But how? Ominis was mistrustful by nature, and it didn’t take much for him to dismiss those around him as a bunch of lying fools, even if he wouldn’t say such a thing about his elders out loud.

The best way to get Ominis to trust him enough to open up would either be through gradual increments over a very long period of time, or it would have to be through shared experiences. Eleazar had no desire to wait for possibly years for Ominis to open up to him that much, walking on eggshells and praying he didn’t inadvertently abuse the young man’s trust. But he had very little in common with the lad, in truth. From what he knew from the gossip amongst the professors, Ominis was the polar opposite of his family in every way, though this realisation had only really come to pass in recent months as his dear Dracaena practically dragged him out of his shell when they were together.

Ominis, it seemed, had not had a happy childhood. The fact he went to live with the Sallows the moment he could signified that. But Eleazar had had a thoroughly enjoyable boyhood with warm and loving parents. How could he connect with Ominis like he needed when they were so different?

Another fifteen minutes passed, and Ominis gave a long, almost silent sigh.

“Forgive me sir, but I really ought to finish tending my Flutterby Bush,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Might I be excused?”

“You don’t have to ask,” Eleazar said. “You’re not being kept here against your will, you know.” He paused as Ominis set his untouched tea on the low table and got to his feet, berating himself silently for not being able to help the lad when he so desperately needed someone to care for him. “Do you want some help? I might not be the most green-fingered of men, but-”

“I’m perfectly capable, thank you,” Ominis said, his tone carefully neutral, and Eleazar avoided swearing aloud by a narrow margin. Of course the poor chap would think everyone wanted to help him because they assumed his blindness rendered him helpless, and not just because they wanted to out of the kindness of their hearts.

But then, Ominis hadn’t known much kindness in his life.

“Well, perhaps you could talk me through what you’re doing?” Fig got to his feet as well. “I’ve always held a bit of a fascination with magical plants, but never really had the time to study them.”

He was keenly aware that Ominis wanted to be alone, but he couldn’t give up, not now. He had no idea how long Dracaena and Sebastian would be before they finished fetching whatever it was they were going to get (or rather, knowing them as he did, getting into mischief), and if he missed this chance to get through to Ominis, it was unlikely he’d ever get such an opportunity again.

Ominis’ shoulders moved with another silent sigh. “Of course, sir.”

Eleazar followed him down a corridor and into a rather glorious, long room, where Dracaena had conjured a number of potting stations at one end, the walls covered with tools, diagrams and cuttings, and at the other end were her cauldrons, where she and Sebastian occasionally experimented, with significantly more success than their Gryffindor friend, Garreth.

Ominis headed straight for the Flutterby Bush, a pretty little shrub whose leaves waved and shivered independently, giving the whole plant a pleasant rippling affect. Eleazar took up a station beside Ominis, clearing his throat a little to let him know where he was, and he clasped his hands, waiting patiently.

To his utter delight, this tactic worked.

Though Ominis’ speech was monotone and halting to begin with, he soon settled into his usual pattern of casual conversation, a small smile even appearing on his lips as he spoke about the shrub before him, how to care for it, nurture it, and what results Professor Garlick expected by the end of term.

After half an hour of this, Fig risked a question.

“What is it about Herbology that you enjoy so much?” he asked, crossing his fingers.

Ominis gave an elegant shrug.

“It’s predictable,” he said. “Magical plants generally won’t hurt you, and those capable of causing harm do so only as it’s their nature, and that’s easily avoided if you know what you’re dealing with. You don’t have to deal with dangerous plants if you don’t want to.”

“It’s safe, then?” Fig said, and Ominis hesitated, his fingers brushing the tips of the shivering leaves.

“Yes,” he said, slowly. “I suppose one could call it that.”

Fig clamped his lips shut, waiting for Ominis to continue speaking. He had to wait a while, but his patience was rewarded as he sighed, lowering his hands to the worktop.

“Plants don’t lie to you,” he said, his voice so soft Fig could barely hear it. “They don’t seek you out to hurt you. They don’t force you to hurt other people. They don’t ignore you and manipulate you and disregard your feelings out of spite.”

Eleazar leaned to the side, peering at him. Ominis’ face was set in a fierce scowl, quite at odds with his gently delivered words. He looked about ready to hit something, and his hands were white-knuckled on the worktop.

“I don’t know about you, but I could use another cup of tea,” Eleazar said gently, and to his delight, Ominis nodded, turned, and led the way back to the sofa.

“What should we do with it?” Dracaena asked, staring at the little crate of tiny bottles in Sebastian’s hands. They’d rushed out of the Forbidden Forest as fast as their legs could carry them and holed up in the nearby stately ruin lying along the road to Hogsmeade. Now, they were huddled up behind a stack of crates, and Sebastian had conjured a blanket to lie on top, shielding them from all sides. The space was quite small, and they were pressed up together. Dracaena tried very hard to ignore how warm he was.

“We could do loads,” Sebastian said. “By my guess, there’s got to be at least fifty-thousand galleons worth of essence here.”

Her jaw dropped. It was an almost obscene amount of money, enough for her, Sebastian and Ominis to buy a big house and live happily on the profits well into their middle ages, probably longer if they were sensible. Of course, Fig would live with them, and…

“We probably shouldn’t,” she said. “Bassy, if this really is worth that much and is as illegal as you say, how the hell would we even sell it? How would we explain where we got the money if we managed it?”

“Well… we’d need to launder it so the Ministry doesn’t get suspicious,” Sebastian said, rubbing his chin. “But that’d mean we need a business, and none of us are likely to do that until we’re out of school.”

“So we just sit on it? What if we’re caught with it?”

“Azkaban, probably,” Sebastian said, pulling one of the bottles out again and tilting it to and fro, his eyes on the swirling, liquid mist within. “A few drops of this makes for a powerful hallucinogen, giving you visions of blissful things. Easy to get addicted to, but the more you use it, the more you need, and the more you take, the worse the visions get, until you’re in a waking nightmare, but you can’t stop. People who get addicted to this end up wasting away because they forget to eat, cowering in a corner and surrounded by horrors.”

Dracaena bit her lip. “We probably shouldn’t sell it, then,” she said. “I don’t want something like this out on the streets where vulnerable people can be hurt by it.”

Sebastian shrugged. “Hey, if people want to take it, it’s not for me to tell them no,” he said. “Their body, their choice, right? And if it makes us rich in the process…”

Dracaena thumped his arm, and he chuckled, rubbing it.

“Take it easy, Sparks,” he said, teasing her with the nickname she hated, and she stuck her tongue out at him. His eyes flicked to it immediately, and his smile slipped for a fraction of a second. He wrenched his gaze away and back to the bottle in his hands, barely larger than his little finger.

“It’s not just used as a drug, it’s a really valuable potion ingredient too,” he said.

Dracaena laughed. “That's better. So we sell it to Pippin?”

Sebastian shook his head. “He’ll want to know where we got so much… even a single bottle of this would raise eyebrows.” He pursed his lips, and Dracaena found her eyes drawn to the shape they made. “The only way to sell this would be outside of Ministry regulations. If we own up and say we found it to anyone on the right side of the law, the Ministry would confiscate it, and maybe we’d get a ‘well done’ in the Daily Prophet or something. Now, I don’t know about you, but if someone asked me whether I wanted to take a risk and the result was fifty grand, or do the ‘proper’ thing and get a thank you if I’m lucky, well, I know which one I’d pick.”

Dracaena nodded slowly. “You make a good point,” she said. “But it’ll be dangerous. We should probably take it back to the castle and hide it somewhere until we know what to do with it.”

“Don’t tell Om-” Sebastian began, but Dracaena poked him hard in the ribs and he yelped with a pained laugh.

“Have you learned nothing? If we don’t tell him, he’ll find out anyway, then be upset we excluded him,” Dracaena scolded. “I’m telling him the moment we get back and Fig’s out of earshot.”

Ominis slumped on the sofa, his head hanging. His voice had returned to its monotone state, but for the first time, Fig was glad of it. He thought he’d heard the worst kinds of neglect when Sebastian had told his story (though he suspected Sebastian hadn’t quite told him everything), but the horrific abuse the young Gaunt had suffered at the hands of his family chilled him to the bone. It was a wonder he was even alive, and the story had only reached up to when Ominis was four years old.

“Marvolo used to put me on a broom for fun,” he said, speaking to his knees. “One might think that’s a brotherly thing to do, but once my feet left the ground, I had absolutely no idea where I was. I didn’t have my wand or even the barest hint of magic at such a young age, so I had no way of telling whether I was two foot from the ground or twenty. He used to love sitting in the sun with a book, listening to me screaming for help. It was music to him. He always did it when Aunt Noctua was away, because when she caught him at it, even my father couldn’t stand in the way of the beatings she’d give.”

A tiny flicker of a smile passed his lips. “I suppose it’s funny in a way, looking back on it. She used to frighten the daylights out of Marvolo, but I wished she wouldn’t sometimes. He always hurt me worse after she twisted his ear of whipped his behind bloody. I do miss her.”

“When did she pass?” Eleazar asked, gently.

“Oh, many years ago now. I think I was six when she stopped coming back.” A flash of pain crossed his face, swept away almost instantly by the carefully neutral expression he so often wore. “Ten years… I can hardly believe it.”

Eleazar raised a hand as if to place it on the young man’s shoulder, but he thought better of it. Ominis was a bit funny about being touched, he shied away from contact from almost everyone. Indeed, he’d only ever known Ominis to accept a brief hug or pat on the back from Sebastian, though he did seem perfectly content to lean on Dracaena when they studied. Not that this surprised him, she was a warm and likeable young witch, able to get on with just about anybody.

He tilted his head as Ominis sighed slightly.

“I apologise for going on so, sir, I don’t want to talk your ear off,” he said, his voice still low and dull. “It must be a frightful bore to listen to me complain so.”

“Nonsense,” Eleazar said. “It’s good for the soul to get things off your chest once in a while.”

Ominis shook his head slightly, turning away, and Eleazar bit down on a swearword. He’d been doing so well, and now he was pulling away again! He drew a steadying breath. Patience, Eleazar, let him go at his own pace.

“I could make us another hot drink, if you like?” he offered instead. “Perhaps something other than tea? A coffee, perhaps, or a hot chocolate? I might even have a little firewhisky on hand if you’re in need of a pick-me-up?”

Ominis huffed a soft laugh. “No thank you, sir,” he said, lacing his fingers together and leaning back until he was resting properly against the back of the sofa, his hands in his lap, his head pillowed, his crystal eyes gazing unseeing at the ceiling.

“Did you know that my parents tried everything they possibly could to fix this?” he said, waving a hand at his eyes, before it fell back into his lap. “Everything, I’m told. Gold no object. There was no Healer too expensive, no shaman too far away, no treatment too experimental.”

Eleazar, who had been about to take a sip of coffee, froze, the rim of the cup touching his lip. The darkness in Ominis’ voice chilled him to the bone, and he dreaded hearing what was to come next.

“None of it worked,” Ominis said, his head lolling a little to the side, his eyes closing. “All of it hurt. They’d make me sit there for hours, trying all these different spells, making me drink potions, rubbing poultices into my eyes…” he shuddered. “I think if I wasn’t blind already, I’d have lost my sight for all that they did. Apparently one of their experiments fused my irises together, not that it made any difference to me, but it made them treat me more like an outcast. ‘At least people will know right away that you’re broken, boy, and won’t trouble themselves with you.’ That’s what my father said when it happened.”

“Ominis,” Eleazar began, but the young Slytherin seemed oblivious to his presence.

“They used to give me a piece of chocolate once they got bored of trying to fix me.” He said. “I was never in the mood for it, I was usually in too much pain to think about eating anything. But they forced me, told me I was being ungrateful. I never could stand the taste of it after that.”

Eleazar shifted guiltily, thinking of all the times he’d made the trio a hot chocolate before sending them off to bed, the warm treat a favourite of his as well. Ominis had always accepted with polite thanks, and usually left more than half his cup undrunk once the other two had scoffed theirs. The few times it had been empty, the cup had been spotless, and Eleazar suspected he’d vanished the contents so as not to offend.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Ominis, what you’ve endured is terrible. I don’t know how someone who was hurt so badly by those that were meant to love you has turned out to be one of the most well-mannered, kind people I know.”

If Ominis registered the gentle compliment, he didn’t react to it. Instead, he sighed.

“It gets worse,” he said gloomily. “Once I got my wand, and had practiced enough with it, they decided to let me join in on the family sport, something I’d always been curious about, until I found out what it was. Marvolo had always called it ‘hunting,’ and I suppose it was, in a way. The thing is, what they were hunting was muggles.”

“Ah, shit, they’re still in there,” Sebastian said, his ear pressed to the door opposite the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy. “Can’t hear what they’re saying, but it’s mostly Ominis talking.” He flashed Dracaena a grin. “Told you it’d work.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said. She’d been anxious about Ominis’ declining mood for a good while now, and she got the feeling he desperately wanted to talk about it, but didn’t know how to start. She was wise enough to know she was ill-equipped for helping him considering the little she knew of his past, no matter how much she wanted to be the one he bared his soul to. “But enough about that for now, where the hell are we going to hide the moonflower essence?”

“Shh!” Sebastian flapped his hand at her, glancing nervously along the corridor. “Anyone could be creeping up on us!”

“Revelio,” Dracaena said, her wand revealing nothing but them. “No, there’s no one.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t trust the portraits,” Sebastian muttered. “Gossips, the lot of them.”

“I guess we could hide it in your dorm?” Dracaena suggested, eyeing the bundle of robes Sebastian was carrying, the crate of essence hidden within.

“Why mine? If anything, we should hide it in yours, everyone loves you and would believe you if you said you didn’t know what it was or where it came from,” Sebastian argued.

“Because I can get into your dorm, you can’t get into mine,” Dracaena said. “If one of us is indisposed, the other should be able to move it pronto, don’t you think?”

“I could get into your dorm if I wanted to,” Sebastian muttered, then his cheeks flushed. “We can’t just keep carrying this around. Maybe if we just hid it in a suit of armour or behind a tapestry or something?”

“Too exposed,” Dracaena said. “We can’t risk someone stumbling on this. Knowing our luck, I bet Peeves would find it.”

As if he was summoned, the colourful poltergeist zoomed around the corner, cackling madly, his arms full of star charts he’d clearly just stolen. He pulled up short in midair with a screeching noise as he saw them standing there, and his little black eyes narrowed in malicious glee.

“Oooh, it’s feeble Fig’s new adoptees!” he cackled. “Up to no good, it seems to me, thinking a professor dad will save your skins!”

“Don’t,” Dracaena said, grabbing Sebastian’s wrist as he went for his wand.

Seemingly disappointed by their lack of reaction, Peeves glowered, his beady eyes lighting on the bundle of robes in Sebastian’s arms. His grin almost split his face in half when both students tensed.

“Oooooh, what’ve you got there? Is it foody or drinky, or something much more naughty?”

He swooped towards them, dropping the star charts, his hands outstretched. Sebastian swore and dived to the floor, holding the robes to his chest. Dracaena stood over him, firing hexes at Peeves as he soared about her, trying to get to Sebastian. She swore herself as he began throwing things at her, vases, potted plants, portraits that yelled at their unexpected flight, and more. She drew the line when he pulled a fat tarantula out of his pocket and flung it at her face.

Dracaena yelped and whacked it away, and unfortunately, it decided to take refuge down the neck of Sebastian’s shirt. He flung himself into the air as though he’d been electrocuted, the bundle of robes flying away as he scrabbled for his collar, howling like a wounded wolf. Dracaena avoided his flailing limbs and hurled herself after the robes as Peeves shot forward, cackling. He caught one end of the robes and Dracaena caught the other, and the wrapped package came flying out.

“Accio!” Dracaena yelled, and it shot into her hands. “Depulso!”

Peeves was blasted backwards, vanishing through the wall with a yelp.

“Get it off get it off get it off get it off!” Sebastian yelled, kicking and slapping at his torso. Dracaena spied the poor tarantula making an eight-legged run for it into the shadows, but delayed saying anything, because at that moment, Sebastian saw fit to tear his shirt right off.

She raised a brow, admiring the freckles on his shoulders, the light dusting of hair on his chest and navel, the tiniest hint of weight around his belly. He blinked up at her, caught her staring, and they both went as red as Gryffindor.

“No spider,” Dracaena said, clearing her throat and nudging his shirt towards him with her foot, averting her gaze. “Look, we better get out of here befo-”

The door to the Room of Requirement opened, and Professor Fig poked his head out. His brows flew up as he caught sight of Sebastian sitting half dressed on the floor, both he and Dracaena blushing furiously. To her surprise, she saw that his eyes were rather red.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” Fig said, trying to smile. “Did you get everything you needed?”

“Uh…” Dracaena glanced at the package in her hands, then at Sebastian. “Actually, Elly, there’s something pretty serious we need to talk to you about.”

Sebastian swore under his breath.

The package sat on Fig’s desk in his office as he stared at it the following day. Dracaena had told him everything about what they’d found, and he’d advised them both, firmly, that as tempting as it was to sell it and get a lot of gold for it, it would only end up in trouble for the lot of them. He would have to take it to the Ministry. Sebastian set up a fierce protest of course, arguing a passionate case as to why they should do things his way as Dracaena sidled over to Ominis and gave him a huge hug that he eagerly returned, burying his face in her shoulder.

Fig had already had a word with Aesop and written to Minister Spavin, and most of the little bottles would make their way to the Ministry for a small reward, about a hundred galleons or so.

He chuckled softly. It wasn’t fifty grand, but it was something. The other would be tucked away in Sharp’s private stores for his more difficult potions.

His smile slid away as he remembered all Ominis had told him before Dracaena and Sebastian had their fight with Peeves. He hadn’t been able to stop himself weeping, hastily casting a Silencing Charm on himself as he listened to all the poor lad had endured. Endless abuse, mindless torment, even torture.

But listening to him had helped him. Ominis had strode to breakfast that morning with a smile on his face, arm in arm with Dracaena, Sebastian on her other side, the three of them laughing and joking freely. Dracaena had caught his eye and mouthed a thank you to him. Fig had raised his goblet, hoping against hope that his youngest charge would feel more comfortable coming to him with any problems he had in the future. The first step, after all, is always the hardest.

Masterlist

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The first thing I want to say about series 6 is, it’s incredibly underrated in my opinion. I get why it’s not one of the great ones, but it’s far from bad and it has so much awesome banter and studio stuff in addition to giving us two pivotal moments in the show’s history (the kiss and Alex sitting on a cake bare-arsed), but we’ll get to that. When I watched series 6 for the first time, the only contestant I knew was Russell Howard, so let’s begin with him, shall we? I don’t have much to say on Russell other than I enjoyed his overall performance and his forte seemed to be tasks where he could show off his physical prowess, which — and I have no qualms admitting that — he’s a decent sportsman and watching him do keepy-ups will stay on my mind for a while.

Also, I always think it’s funny when one of Greg’s mates is on ‘cos they have absolutely zero respect for the Taskmaster whereas everyone else seems a little apprehensive at first usually. I feel similarly about Asim Chaudhry; He was fun to watch, though what he lacks in physical abilities and competence he makes more than up for in charm and cheek. Just like Russell, he had his moments and I think he managed to make Alex (the assistant) jealous once or twice. I mean, look at Alex’s face when Greg invites Asim to sit on his lap. I think this moment also highlights how Greg’s and Alex’s on-screen relationship changed in series 6, though more on that in a bit. Now, Liza Tarbuck. One might assume that I should be prepared for women like Liza Tarbuck and Sally Phillips at this point who are utter nutcases (affectionately) and absolutely not above doing the most insane shit imaginable. I mean, I’m not, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy them. What I remember about Liza’s attempts (and maybe I’m misremembering / misinterpreting) is that she didn’t appear to be ‘needing’ to win, instead she seemed more interested in having a good time and being creative. And who can forget:

Tim Vine is an entirely different beast and I’m not sure how I feel about him, though with every rewatch of series 6 I grow fonder of him (I’m calling that the Paul Chowdhry Effect). The thing is, I appreciate Tim going for the pun, ‘cos I’m a sucker for bad puns. But contrary to Liza, Tim gave me the impression he wanted to win and on occasion it felt like he was trying a bit too hard. Nevertheless, his big announcement and the hook disaster still crack me up only by thinking about them and the solo task he was made to do with putting together an outfit was perfect for him. I don’t really know what to make of Alice Levine, and it seems to become a habit that I’ll save contestants who baffle me for last in this sort of review. I think she’s incredibly charming and sweet, and she had a strong pet name game going on with Alex, which was quite adorable. I actually assumed she was given the solo task and had to come up with different pet names for Alex whenever she began a task, but nope. On the other hand, I kept asking myself whether Alice wanted to do Taskmaster or if she was told to do it, because in my opinion, she appears to half-ass a lot of tasks and does minimal effort, but I don’t know. Now, before I get to Greg and Alex, I just like to mention that I think the tasks in this series were actually quite strong and there are several of which I’d like to have a go myself (e.g. the bedtime story, find the link, parachute for the wooden spoon, the egg live task of episode 7, and many more). On my mainblog I made a post a couple of months ago about the shift in Greg’s and Alex’s on-screen dynamic between series 5, champion of champions 1 and series 6, ‘cos what the fuck was that? It went from something pretty one-sided (as in Alex being the besotted one) to them going for a full on snog.

I’m not complaining, just pointing out that they went from 0 to 100 pretty fast in that series — and it was only the sixth series! Speaking from series 17, I think we’re due another kiss, guys (yes, I’m absolutely shamelessly shipping the Taskmaster and the assistant). Overall I really enjoy this series, it’s got so many great and iconic moments that it baffles me how people don’t like it. I’m not here to invalidate anyone’s opinion, believe me, I have a great one coming up soon-ish, and with that, I’ll see you all in series 7! Thank you so much for sticking around!